 Review by cdru 
UPDATED: 1.4 years ago
member for 5.6 years, 3082 visits, last login: a few hours ago
 Fort Wayne,Allen,IN
 $45 per month
 "Fast data. Great SD picture. Great HD. What more can you want?!?!"
 "Ordering/Customer Service is lacking although CS is always friendly"
 "I love it. Now only if they would quit raping customers on POTS"
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(ratings match consensus)
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The below is mainly regarding FiOS TV. FiOS Data has been great since I installed it several years ago. While I don't run the speed test on a regular basis, the other end of the connection is almost always the limiting factor in what speeds I see. I think it's a great value for the speeds you get.
I had FiOS TV installed yesterday so here's my initial review after kicking the tires some yesterday afternoon and last night. Unfortunately I was roofing most of the evening until the storms started coming through the area so I haven't played around with it as much as I will after a week.
I'll start from the beginning of the ordering process.
More then several months ago Verizon came out to my company and was accepting "advanced sign up" notification cards from people who presumably be the first to get FiOS TV once it was available. I filed one out and anxiously awaited some type of contact. A few months ago I finally got a letter saying that FiOS TV was becoming available, but it actually wasn't available quite yet in my area. So a few more weeks of waiting. I got impatient so I decided to call in and play stupid consumer with the FSC to see if I could get an install date. I couldn't, but I was able to put in a "pre-order" that could later be turned into an order once service was available. Someone would call me back to schedule an appointment once it was available (I'm still waiting on that call BTW).
Finally I saw it was available checking daily on the website. Around June 20th I put an order in online for the Premier package, a HD DVR, and the Movie Package. It was a pretty painless process and was straight forward. I was expecting some issues as I'm a data only customer and don't have POTS through Verizon, but it didn't seem to be an issue. I printed out the order page saying that my order went through. My install date was July 2nd. I was excited because I was already taking that day off for a 5-day holiday weekend.
On the 25th, I found a thread here that said you could get HBO for only a few bucks (well, actually $7) but getting both for $20 was a good deal. So I called the FSC to change my movie package to the HBO+Movie Package deal. The lady I talked to couldn't find my order and said it was lost in the system and I'd have to setup my appointment again. So I had to re-setup my appointment but couldn't get the 2nd...the earliest available was July 9th, a week later then I originally had. The rep also did not no anything about the movie package deal and said it wasn't in the system. Going back to my days dealing with Dish, I know that if first you don't succeed, hang up and call back in for a different Rep. After 3 or 4 reps, I finally got one that knew what I was talking about and easily changed my order. So now I had everything that I wanted except for the July 2nd install date, but oh well.
Flash forward in time to yesterday. I was going to take off work at 11:30 for a 1/2 day to deal with the install as my wife isn't really technically inclined. At 11:00 my wife called and said that they installer had been there for 20 minutes (I was in a meeting up to that point and didn't get an earlier message that the installer was coming early). I wasn't real happy that I had an appointment for 1-5 but he was there at 10:40, but I guess it's a little better to be there early then late. So I ran home to meet with him. Prior to leaving, I spoke with the installer to give him a general run down of what I wanted and he got to work with some preliminary things.
I didn't want the installer running the cables on the outside of my siding just tacked into place, so I had already pre-ran a line from inside the garage near the ONT to the TV. Unfortunately I apparently nicked the line somewhere as the signal quality was quite a bit lower then expected. The installer said it probably would be best to run a new line. He did not have a problem just running the cable along the ground around the perimeter of the house leaving an extra 20 feet or so on each end for me to re fish the cable (doing it myself was my decision, not his BTW). After running the cable he got things hooked up and working pretty smoothly.
He was kind enough to leave a new wall plate and jacks for me to finish off the outlet once I got the cable reran. I also asked about back feeding the output back onto the coax so that a TV upstairs could also get the receiver's output. He said that the best option was to run it's own cable, but also gave me a RCA RF modulator if I needed it. I also told him not to worry much about programming the FIOS remote for all my devices as I already have a Harmony remote that I would be using instead. In the garage he installed the new ActionTec router, not that boxy monstrosity of a thing they had been using.
Activation of my account was pretty straight forward and didn't have much troubles. He did ask if I was to have HD programming. Well, I did order a HD DVR and it was hooked up via HDMI to a LCD TV, so I said it was a pretty safe bet that I would have wanted them, but as to if they were on the actual order I didn't know because I didn't know they had to be ordered explicitly. A quick call to someone got those setup easily.
Total time the installer was there was probably around 2 hours. I thought he went above what a normal person would do with the "freebies" to help me out. It probably didn't cost much, and it saves him time (and time=money) by me doing some of the work how I wanted it done, but it wasn't necessary. Keeping customers happy I guess is a good thing though.
The only issue that I've had so far was that my subscription VOD was not working. I spent about 20 minutes on the phone with the FSC to get things going. Apparently my order didn't process on the video server like it was suppose to.
As to the quality of service...
SD TV channels are as good as if not significantly better then what I had with Dish Network and my 522 receiver. I didn't look through everything, but I have quite a few more channels then what I had with just the AT100 package. I haven't watched enough to say if there are issues with picture quality anywhere specifically, but all in all, SD programming was good.
I did not have HD with Dish, so I can't do a comparison. I did channel surf some between the HD channels and now kick myself for not going HD a long time ago. Picture quality was amazing but when your baseline is SD, any improvement will be amazing.  I turned on the home run derby competition on ESPN and flipped back and forth between the SD and HD feeds to show the Mrs the difference. The clarity of being able to see faces in the crowd or a sign clear out in center field makes me wish football season was closer then it is. I didn't experience any issues with HD such as blockiness, pixelation, etc. But again, I haven't used it long enough to give a definitive report.
After we solved the little VOD problem mentioned above, we didn't have any issues with the VOD system. We watched a few shows from HBO last night as well as Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire and had no issues as well. Picture quality was excellent too although only in SD.
All praises aside, I do have a few gripes that I need to share. Most aren't related to technical things, but rather user interface design. Some may be resolved after I explore the menus some, and others probably are more just adjusting to a different menu style. But I still think that I should mention some.
1. No on-screen caller id. Verizon's a telecommunications company. You can't tell me that with all the state of the art features that the entire FiOS system offers that you can't display a caller id overlay?
2. I have a wide screen TV. Why can't the program guide take up the entire screen showing me either more shows, or more details per show?
3. I can't seem to find a way to stretch a non 16:9 video to fit my TV. This is probably more my TV then Verizon's fault.
4. Many shows don't show up in the guide with complete names. There just isn't enough space to fit them. For instance, The Adventures of Jimmy Neutron might just show up as The Adventures of J or sometimes even less.
5. Similar to #4, some of the VOD movies and Shows descriptions aren't very useful with just the limited number of characters that are shown in the summary. You have to go into the show/movie's detail to get a more useful description. For instance, we watched Penn & Teller's Showtime show Bull$#it and the description it showed was something like "Penn & Teller explore American's infatuation with". OK...that tells you nothing and actually describes every single episode.
6. Limited HD space. I haven't hit the DVR features yet, but my Dish DVR had more space then this thing has, and it's several years older.
7. VOD programming can't be skipped ahead/repeated behind. You can ff/rew, but not skip.
I'll update this as I solve issues or find other things that might be wrong. Overall I have been very happy with the switch but I have to qualify that I've only used it less then a day so this is subject to change.
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