Verizon FiOS TV

VERIZON FIOS TV REVIEW: A Light at the End of the Cable

March 2007 By ––Grant Clauser

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For about a year neighborhoods across American have been quietly invaded by white Verizon trucks, installers and large spools of cable. What these installers have been doing is hooking up fiber optic cables, sometimes on telephone poles, sometimes buried underground. Verizon hopes that these new fiber optic cables will change the rules for how TV, Internet and telephone service is delivered to the home. It’s starting to happen already, and in my neighborhood it happened just before Christmas. FiOS TV has arrived and made life a little less secure for the cable and satellite TV companies.

A fiber optic system has the ability to deliver a lot of data very fast. One cable can give you Internet, phone and TV, and at least for now, do it cheaper than most anything else. That doesn’t mean it’s the best answer for every customer; it just means it’s a very compelling competitor, and especially in the area of television service, it helps lessen the monopoly hold that cable companies enjoy.

Since voice and data services, in everyday use, are essentially the same across providers except for who you write the check to and for how much, I’m going to concentrate here on Verizon’s FiOS TV, the part of the package that’s raising the most questions among consumers, because no matter how much everyone hates their cable company, it’s also the hardest relationship to quite.



The Offer

Verizon’s bid in most cities is a strong one—200 channels, including Music Choice channels and about 20 high definition channels all for $42 (the basic lineup and price may vary from metro to metro). That includes the local channels at no extra cost. The selection and cost compares very favorably to the cable and satellite offerings. Moving up you can add a variety of premium movie and sports packages. The set-top-boxes support both pay-per-view and video-on-demand (much of which is free). In the Philadelphia area (and others) subscribers can even opt for Comcast’s SportsNet, which is one of the major bonds Comcast customers have to their service.

The set-top-boxes Verizon supplies, all Motorola models, range from basic standard definition or high definition, to dual-tuner hard drive digital video recorders and a Media Center which can be networked to your PC for music and picture streaming and will send recorded programs to other set-top-boxes in the house.



Installation

Going FiOS is a little like switching from oil heat to gas. It’s a whole infrastructure change in your house, and can take multiple technicians a whole day to complete. But unlike the fuel company, all the work is free. Verizon wants you that badly.

With cable TV, assuming the cable line is connected to your house, hook up isn’t much more complicated than attaching the coax line to the set-top-box and turning it on. With satellite TV, once you’ve got the dish mounted on the wall or roof and aligned (an installer usually gets that done 20 minutes), hook up is mostly a matter of connecting the coax cable and calling DirecTV to activate the service. Multi-tuner DVRs can make it a little more complicated, requiring multiple coax lines from the dish and diplexers to help distribute the signal. A full-blown satellite install may take three hours. With a FiOS system, expect to set aside most of the day.

My installation actually started about three months before the TV service began, because the Internet and phone services rolled out first. This required the installation of a main box on the outside of the house (Verizon does occasionally install this inside), plus some inside wiring and a battery backup system for the phone service. With a FiOS system, if your power goes out, you’d lose phone service without the battery backup. The final item was the modem/wireless router, in my case it was an Actiontec model MI424-WR.

When it was time for the TV service installation, the technician checked the outside box for signal quality and started to run the coax cable (for TV the fiber signal is converted to coax at the outside box) to the router and throughout the house to the three TVs. Because much of the information going to the set-top-box is transferred over the Internet all the set-top-boxes are networked to the router. The technician then tested all the coax cables in the house, ran some fresh cables when he wasn’t happy with the signal quality and even hooked up a room that didn’t have a cable run.

Once all the wiring was in place, it was time to connect the set-top-boxes to the TV and activate them. This actually turned out to be a lengthier process than it sounds like. Once initiated each box goes through a set up routine, then the technician connected his own computer to the router to configure the TV receivers, and the receivers had to take another few steps on their own. Two of the three boxes in my installation proved temperamental at first, and one just wouldn’t give in and was replaced. Twice throughout the install the process was stalled while the installer called tech support (and was put on hold) to work through unexpected problems.



Hardware

I opted for two high definition DVRs and one standard definition receiver. The HD boxes were Motorola 6416s with 160 GB hard drives. The hard drives, bigger than the DirecTV Tivo units I was replacing, are perfect for recording mounds of standard definition, but only allow about 12 hours of high def recording, so you have to be careful how much high def you record and be sure to delete it after viewing so as not to run out of space. High definition output is either via component or HDMI. I used the component outputs. Audio outputs include stereo and both digital coaxial and digital optical.

As a six-year Tivo user, I was a little worried about how I’d adapt to the new menu and program guide, but Verizon’s proved to be easy to use. Navigating is simple, though the remote includes separate page up and down buttons instead of allowing you to use the channel up and down buttons to move through the guide.

To record a program that is currently playing just press the record button. To record an upcoming show displayed on the program guide, just press the select button and you’ll be taken to a page with recording options (record once, record series … ). Pressing the list button will take you to the list of programs you’ve recorded. There are also dedicated buttons on the remote for on-demand and pay-per-view programs organized by genre, and channel.

The menu buttons takes you to the headquarters of the system. Press that and you get a column of options on the left of the screen which you can use to go to recordings, schedule recordings, view a guide only of the HDTV channels, a mini guide, pay-per-view, on-demand and extras. The guide for searching out programs to record is pretty comprehensive, allowing you to search by title, genre, channel and HDTV. Unfortunately you can’t combine those categories to search, for example, HDTV and movie.

The box responds quickly to the remote, so channel surfing isn’t a press and wait affair. The remote is not backlit, and the buttons are quite small but it’s all fairly self-explanatory.

The standard definition box is identical in function and menu to the DVR except for the recordings and output. It included coax, composite and S-video outputs plus standard stereo audio and digital audio outputs.

Verizon’s Media Center or Home Media DVR allows recording just like the other DVR, but it also uses your home’s network for place shifting around the home. If you record a show in one room, you can watch it in another room. The only caveate with that is that it can only stream standard definition programs to other rooms, not high definition. So if you have more than one HDTV you’re better off getting two of the HD DVRs, which is what I did. The Home Media DVR can also act like a wireless media receiver to access music and picture files from your computer and listen or watch them over your entertainment system.

The Verdict

First, it important to point out that, at least at the time of this writing, Verizon doesn’t have all it’s support eggs in a row yet. Due to a mistake a representative made at the time the service was order I wasn’t able to receive the HD channel package right away. The technician who installed the system said there was nothing he could do about it, but he reported it to Verizon and assured me it would be fixed within a day or two. Well, nearly a week and four telephone calls to Verizon later, my high def channels kicked in. My experience with DirecTV when issues came up was very different. Every time I’d call to make a change, the service rep on the phone could take care of it immediately. For some reason Verizon’s customer service reps need to go through multiple layers in order to do a simple thing like fix your channel lineup.

Once that issue was resolved (Verizon did credit my account a few bucks for the inconvenience) service has proceeded without interruption.

As with any TV service, picture quality varies from channel to channel. The high definition channels look exceptional. For pure eye candy National Geographic and Discovery HD get you up close wildlife, nature and outer space in rich detail, but major network offers are equally good looking. The Dolby Digital audio signal actually sounds a bit fuller than I encountered with other services. While the high definition programs look great, some of the standard definition signals slightly more noise and artifacts than with DirecTV’s standard signal. These differences were only apparent when viewed on a large (50-inch) TV. Pausing programs is not as smooth as with a Tivo. The picture is a bit jerky when forwarding through paused programs and it’s easy to over-run the program when skipping commercials. The free on-demand offerings include a comprehensive selection, including lots of kids shows, movies, some screen candy in the form of rolling landscapes and a number of DIY, self-help and exercise programs provided by MagRack. Accessing on-demand programs is also quick due to the speed of the FiOS network. Unfortunately the free on-demand channels don’t include any high definition programs.

Choosing a TV service can be a big commitment. You want to do it once and be done with it. Many customers will keep the same TV service for 10 years or more without considering switching. As cable, satellite and now FiOS services expanded their offerings, it becomes much more than just a matter of price or channel lineup. High definition, DVR and broadband options now give consumers much greater choice in the market. Verizon’s entry into fray is a welcome one, and likely will be the nudge that gets its competitors to start rethinking how they do business as well.

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