Im looking to switch over to FIOS in the immediate future, however, one of the things holding me back is the embarrassing size of the DVR; 20H of HD time doesnt cut it for us. We currently have a dish service that we are fed up with, but they have over 80H of HD recording time and maybe 200 of SD time. Ive seen that Verizon is planning to issue a new box soon, but how soon? Any details on it? We need it to be able to record shows for two rooms.
Search this forum and you'll see lots of speculation on if and when Verizon will resolve this deficiency. Rumors of a new Cisco box coming out in 2010, then rumors that the box rollout is delayed. Also discussions on capability to add your own hard drive to expand capacity, but again nothing concrete.
It's a shame that FiOS has so many HD channels, and such a limited capacity on their DVR to record them. It's my biggest beef with the service (as it is for many others as you'll see from postings in the forums!).
Even when the Cisco/Scientific Atlanta box arrives, it will probably only double the HD storage, although they may be forced to provide more. The 160gb drives currently used are essentially out of production, and I suspect the 320gb drives will be around from OEM's for perhaps another year.
As others have pointed out, the long term fix is to buy a TIVO or MOXIE DVR, and pay the $3 a month for a cable card. That won't get you Verizon Video on Demand, nor will it get you VErizon's program guide. However the TIVO and MOXIE program guides are probably more accurate than the Verizon's. You will have to decide how much you want Video on Demand (VOD).
The cost of the monthly service from TIVO plus the Cable card is about the same as Verizon's HD DVR rental. The Moxie comes with a lifetime channel guide, and you can elect one time payment for lifetime subscription for the TiVo. You can add additional storage to both units easily. There is another thread here that links to a side by side comparison of the TiVo and Moxie products.
So you pay the money, and you make your choices.
The Cisco Boxes are new boxes for Verizon, but also the Motorola boxes are being doubled in size as well. So this year we are supposed to see the Cisco DVR's with double the hard drive space and possible esata support, and the new motorola's with the 320 gb har ddrive space and we are still crossing our fingers for esata support for mass storage add on's.
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