Software changes needed - my first post, Does Verizon read these?
svengal
Enthusiast - Level 2

Use of the FIOS guide is very frustrating compared to other suppliers and due to recent changes Verizon made.

The Guide need to have the capability to go back at least one  hour in time. Often when the tv is turned on there will be a program ending that looks very interesting. Currently there is no way to find out what the  program is. The capablity to go back an hour solves this problem as have competitors, Ther is no need to use the left arrow to select "all channels" as it can be done with the "favorites" button.

The second gripe I have is that Verizon "upgraded" ??? the guide software making it more cumbersome and frustrating.

Prior to the recent software change use of the guide was OK except for the issue above.

Now when you go through the channels in the "guide" and go to "info" and exit "info" the tv goes back to the channel yo were watching, notg the ghide channel. The left arrow does get you back to the guide but this was an unnecessary change and no info on the change.

The third gripe is setting favorites. Now the option key brings up a list of stuff and you have to select favoirtes and then right arrow.  Does any one really want any of the stuff y ou now get with the "options key" I think the "upcoming porgrams" option is of little value and the other items belong in settings.

A fourth item, for our family, would be highly desirable. When selecting a program in the guide for a future time you get a reminder option. The reminder does work but if  you are not watching the TV you miss likely will miss the program.

Instead of a remnder note it would be great if at the specified time the channel was automatically change to the selected program. This great feature was used by a  previous provider.

I personally don't see anything so good about FIOS but this may be due to us not having and Hi Def TVs.

I will be looking at other providers, we have two others in the area, to see if they are any easier to use and better featured. 

Any and all opinions welcome.

I am in Floirda so your programming may be different.

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Re: Software changes needed - my first post, Does Verizon read these?
jumpin68ny
Master - Level 2

Verizon may read this but these are peer to peer discussions mainly.

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Re: Software changes needed - my first post, Does Verizon read these?
Tomato
Newbie

Verizon sure seems to not care about being useful. I don't know all the details about the Info thing but I do notice that it works in some places and not in other places. Something else that would be useful is to have the Upcoming showings available in more palces. I am sure I could easily list dozens of things like that. The big one is the hard drive storage space; 160 GB is small. That makes FOS small, very small; not big like they advertise. Another is the lack of support of the USB port or things like that.

In the past, the FiOS TV Central previously allowed us to view over the internet what has been recorded, and to set shows and movies for recording. That feature should have been expanded to allow the capability of doing those things from STBs in the same house, but instead the capability seems to be removed; we cannot do things over the internet that we previouslu could, or at least I see it missing. We apparently can set things to record using a cell phone, so that indicates to me that Verizon only cares to do what the competition does.

Based on my experience, even if some Verizon personel read these messages, the Verizon company won't do anything unless the competition does.

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Re: Software changes needed - my first post, Does Verizon read these?
jumpin68ny
Master - Level 2
A big complaint of many people is the small size of the hard drive.  Verizon is working on a newer STB with a 320gig hard drive and possible external drive support.
I would like to be able to set recording, delete recording etc. from a remote STB in the same house but the FIOS TV Central site does allow you to set recordings, delete recording, view what you have recorded and see what shows are upcoming.  I can do the same from my blackberry.  They have an APP for that.


@Tomato wrote:

Verizon sure seems to not care about being useful. I don't know all the details about the Info thing but I do notice that it works in some places and not in other places. Something else that would be useful is to have the Upcoming showings available in more palces. I am sure I could easily list dozens of things like that. The big one is the hard drive storage space; 160 GB is small. That makes FOS small, very small; not big like they advertise. Another is the lack of support of the USB port or things like that.

In the past, the FiOS TV Central previously allowed us to view over the internet what has been recorded, and to set shows and movies for recording. That feature should have been expanded to allow the capability of doing those things from STBs in the same house, but instead the capability seems to be removed; we cannot do things over the internet that we previouslu could, or at least I see it missing. We apparently can set things to record using a cell phone, so that indicates to me that Verizon only cares to do what the competition does.

Based on my experience, even if some Verizon personel read these messages, the Verizon company won't do anything unless the competition does.


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Re: Software changes needed - my first post, Does Verizon read these?
Tomato
Newbie

@jumpin68ny wrote:
I would like to be able to set recording, delete recording etc. from a remote STB in the same house but the FIOS TV Central site does allow you to set recordings, delete recording, view what you have recorded and see what shows are upcoming.  I can do the same from my blackberry.  They have an APP for that.

Yes, I very much agree with the idea to be able to do more using the remote STBs. However note that I said that the DVR capability is missing from TV Central. Actually it is missing when I use the userid I have been using; when I use another userid, it is still there. For the userid that it is missing from, it was there previously.

One problem with Verizon is that the userids are very, very confusing. They have more than one type of userid and it is very unclear what type of id each of them are and it is unclear what works and does not work. In addition to that, the software is buggy so when a userid does not work, I cannot know if the problem is a bug or something I am doing that causes the problem.

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Re: Software changes needed - my first post, Does Verizon read these?
jumpin68ny
Master - Level 2

The account you should use to access FIOS TV Central to manage your account, view DVR, etc. should be your primary verizon.net account.

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Re: Software changes needed - my first post, Does Verizon read these?
Tomato
Newbie

So you are saying that in order to use the DVR feature, we must use the account that has full access to the account? In other words, the account that can directly purchase features and products?

I don't want to. I think that makes the service vulnerable to untrustworthy people. In my case, the account is my mother's, not mine, and eventhough she trusts me, I don't want to use the account that has full access to everything. I really, really want to stop doing that. I think it is sloppy that Verizon requires us to use the account that has so much access just to check the status of recorded programs and programs scheduled to record when the unit is in the same house.

I set up an account that is associated with my cell phone, which is not the primary phone for the account but it is one of many phones for the family account. The Verizon software is confused and confusing. I was eventually able to use this other account for TV Central; it worked, and I had access to the DVR using that account. But then yesterday (early this morning) the DVR feature is missing; it is available using the primary account, but not the other account associated with my cell phone.

As I said, Verizon software is confused and confusing. I had trouble using the id I had been using, so when I attempted to retrieve account iformation, I entered the email address. It told me the id associated with that address. Then when I tried to use that id, it asked me for the email address and when I used the address I had used, it said that address is already in use. It is very frustrating. I should call support but in the past I have had problems getting help on the seekend. It surprises me when they say they are closed for the entire weekend.

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