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Fiber TV Install and Experience
SkinnyGuy writes "The same guy who brought you the Fiber to the Premises (FTTP), FiOS broadband installation process, now brings you a detailed look at the FiOS TV install. He's thrilled and apparently couldn't be happier to say goodbye forever to Cable TV. There's a lengthy story and interesting slideshow." From the article: "I chuckled a bit to myself. After all these years of the phone company having to lease out and let competitors use its phone lines and utility poles, Verizon was using a competitor's wiring (and the work they did to run it into my house). Sorry, Cablevision."
I had FIOS installed a month ago. Right now only internet is available, I'm just waiting for Verizon to get permission from the state to start offering TV. I can't wait. Comcast thinks that they can do things with impunity, such as dropping channels, moving channels around, adding new service (and charging more), etc. The day after Verizon announces FIOS TV, I'm ordering it.
anyone know? On my Time Warner HD channels most shows are pretty good but a lot of times you can see pixels
You turn on your tv to watch your favorite show only to discover that channel surfing collapsed the wave and moved it to a different day.
Damn fibre!
In reality, we have had fibre for years here in england (NTL) and its nice and stable (apart from when its not).
liqbase
I love my cable company. In fact I am considering switching *away* from Verizon telephone service and getting Charter's phone service. I have digital cable through them (including about 10 HD channels and on demand), plus 6M/1M internet service. Everything works great, and when I call to make adjustments to my service they are always very helpful.
I feel sorry for this guy moving everything to Verizon. My experience with them has been less than stellar.
My cable representative told me that FiOS causes cancer ... is this true?
Didn't he tell Cablevision in TFA that he wanted to get away from a monopolistic operation? Isn't Verizon just another monopolistic company that wants to lock you in?
root@allevil:~#
Honestly the problems with the cable provider have little to do with the technology and more to do with the cable provider having a de-facto monopoly on the distribution grid. Competition does wonderful things for forcing companies to provide what consumers want and to keep them in line, as consumers have the option of still getting similar services from someone else.
If too many people change to another provider as you have done then that provider might eventually take on the attitude that your old provider had. When that happens, assuming that there is another option then people will switch to that provider instead.
Do not look into laser with remaining eye.
Every time a story mentions FIOS I have to post to say how desperately I want it. I [i]hate[/i] my cable company with a passion (Cablevision), and I can't install a dish. I'm in Brooklyn and am counting the days until FIOS is available.
Unfortunately, I have no idea how many days that will be.
"Moderate drinking can help prevent amputated limbs" -- Abigail Zuger, NYTimes, 12/31/02
I just made the switch to FiOS... I'm pretty happy with it.
So far, it's been like dealing with a totally different company when dealing with anything related to FiOS. They show none of their old nickel-and-diming that they did on the normal phone service, and they have been very responsive.
Not only that, when they got to my house, we didn't have a fiber drop to the house (it was at the end of the block), so the tech called his boss, who sent a truck full of people to dig the trench and run the line the rest of the way to the house (across several neighbors' yards). When they were done they cleaned it all up so well you wouldn't even know they had been there.
The combined install time for Cable and Fiber was about 6 hours I think, but I wasn't there for the whole thing.
This is a little off-topic, but I guess it'd be helpful for those thinking about switching such as myself. There is a little disclaimer at the bottom of the FiOS ordering page, saying that once switched, we can't go back to DSL again because the wiring has been changed. Does this mean that we can't ever have DSL again even with another phone company, say AT&T? What about the phone service? Thanks.
What's the point of posting anonymously if you're going to mention your name in the subject line, Senator Frist?
I have been living in upstate Jersey for about a year now. I have seen Cablevision frantically try and upgrade their systems to compete with the invading FIOS. My speeds on Cablevision tests at about 13Mb/1.8Mb which is close to their advertized 15Mb/2Mb. So not bad.
But, they have throttled me 3 times and have told me next time they will either not release the throttle or terminate my account. They have told me the throttle is a function of the processor load on the managed switch over time (wtf?). So I have to be very careful now. I have been referred to a section in the contract I was forced to agree to that states something very vague along the lines of "Cablevision reserves the right to do anything we want".
Verizon save me!
"What's the use of a good quotation if you can't change it?" - Doctor Who
I like your signature. I like your mod rating too.
"What's the use of a good quotation if you can't change it?" - Doctor Who
Right as this article was posted I was starting to draft the fiber distribution plans for an area in the Journal Square C.O. in Hoboken, NJ.
There is a war going on for your mind.
Yeah I was pretty stunned by that, too. I guess I shouldn't have been, because it's probably going to work -- people don't expect commercials to flat-out lie to them, because of truth-in-advertising laws, so they'll probably believe that Net Neutrality is bad, because they saw it on TV.
Unless Google and some other deep-pocketed companies get together and start running some serious counter-advertising (and just running stuff on the Internet is not going to work; people who use the internet "recreationally" are almost all already sold on the idea of Net Neutrality, it's preaching to the choir), I think Congress is going to roll over and we're going to have a tiered Internet before people even know what happened to them.
I know a guy who works as an attorney for the telecom companies, actively working against Net Neutrality every day, and not even he would say something as cut-and-dried as "Net Neutrality means you'll pay more." Everything he says is the usual beating-around-the-bush lines that you'd expect, and that's the line I expected they'd maintain in the commercials. But they really decided to kick directly for the balls.
I suggest a counter-advertising campaign of "Telephone Companies Are Funding Al Qaeda" or perhaps "Comcast's Executives Worship Satan."
"Ladies and gentlemen, my killbot features Lotus Notes and a machine gun. It is the finest available."
The article is all about receiving one-way broadcast video content. That's fine for the couch-potato crowd, but what do you get in Internet bandwidth?
To me, this guy seems to be mis-attributing his excitement to Fiber, when he's ready just excited to be getting HDTV for the first time.
That said, getting an HD feed is always great (especially the first time you see your new HDTV the way it was meant to be displayed).
I had FiOS internet installed a couple of years ago and the TV service installed over the summer in my home. I'll focus on the TV like the original article. I don't have a HD set, and I already owned a TiVo (with the lifetime subscription) so I just got the regular tuner box, not the DVR. Installation was pretty straight forward. My ONT was a little too old (it didn't have the sort of DOCSIS-like support that the modern ones have that allow the tuner boxes to call back and set up streaming video sessions), so I had to have a separate box installed on the network. It wasn't a problem, but it's the second wall plug Verizon has needed for FiOS (the first being on the ONT itself). Install took a couple of hours all told and the tech was very well informed and friendly. He didn't mind that I was using a TiVo instead of spending the extra $12/month for their DVR, he even supplied the somewhat oddball digital optical cables needed to connect the box to my receiver.
The box itself isn't bad. It has a program guide and a reasonably extensive selection of PPV and Video on Demand. There is even a decent amount of free VoD options. That said, the quality of the VoD is not all that wonderful (even at SD resolution), and the ones that they're actually trying to sell are grossly overpriced. For stuff you can purchase, the cost is generally in the $10-$15/hour range, and for something that you can only view for a couple of hours and has somewhat crummy quality I can't see myself ever using it. Frankly, even the free VoD offerings aren't all that compelling and I've used the feature a grand total of twice--both times I was just playing around too. Example free VoD things are: One of the better sketches from the latest Robot Chicken, A discovery channel program about something or the other, some music videos, ads for videogames, extremely patronizing "help on making the most of your FiOS service" clips, and so on.
Some bad news: The box has USB and serial ports on the back, with an optional ethernet port. All impressive features that could set it apart from the normal cable boxes, all disabled. Yes, this means if you want to use a TiVo you have to set up an IR blaster. I believe the serial port was disabled entirely out of spite. If you don't use the router they gave you when you got the FiOS install it is very difficult to get the VoD working. The router they give you is a buggy piece of crap Linksys DI-604. I had to swap out the router because it was constantly generating packet storms over my FiOS link, and I still haven't managed to get VoD working again.
Overall, I prefer Verizon over the old Cox service we used to have. The base price is slightly cheaper, but since we didn't have to rent the box from Cox the price is a wash in the end (although Cox bumped their prices a few months ago around here, making FiOS cheaper again). One interesting thing with their plan is that they offer several ala cart options, typically for foreign language channels. While they're somewhat pricey ($7-$10/month for each channel), Cox didn't offer them at all. The HD selection is much better than Cox, not that I care yet since I still only have a SD TV.
From what I understand, Verizon is dragging their feet on coming out with a Cablecard for FiOS TV, which is a real shame because I hate cable boxes and I don't really care about their VoD options or guide. IR blasters suck.
Oh, about the guide: Unlike TiVo they apparently don't have a staff that double checks the guide info they get. It's not unusual to fire up a show on the TiVo and notice that the guide information that the TiVo recorded on the bottom of the screen is wrong or generic.
I read the internet for the articles.
Because of the fact that the harder you compress the channels, the more you can push down the wire, the cable companies have every incentive to push the compression to the limit, and then push a bit more.
At least as I understand it, most Video-over-IP systems (which may or may not include FiOS, I don't really know that much about how it works) ought to be a little more resistant to that, because they don't transmit all the channels simultaneously as cable does.
There is an incentive to over-compress on cable TV systems because that's the only way to add more channels. If you want to go from 150 channels to 300 channels, and you're already using all the bandwidth, you need to compress each one at 2:1 in order to squeeze more in.
IP based systems don't work this way, because they only transmit down the wire the channel that you're watching. That's not to say that your entire connection is used to transmit that one channel (because that would prohibit having more than one tuner per household, or doing things like TiVO-style watch+record or PiP, which would put them at a disadvantage compared to cable), but it's not transmitting all the channels, all the time. When you want to change channels a command is sent upstream and you get a different feed hooked up at the head-end. So each channel can take a much larger percentage of the total bandwidth than on a cable system, at least theoretically. I think in practice, both IPTV companies and cable companies will compromise on some sort of de facto standard quality, which they think is just enough to not cause a person on a SDTV to get too pissed off. That's the way they work -- they'll deliver the bare minimum necessary to prevent people from switching, and not an ounce more.
Reading the FiOS article on Wikipedia, it seems as though Verizon's system in addition to the upstream and downstream data channels, also has a separate and distinct channel (1550nm) for RF video overlaid on an optical carrier. So conceivably they could be using data circuits for switching, and then send the video down the RF channel. This seems somewhat unlikely, but who knows.
In theory anyway, a circuit-switched system like that offered by optical fiber could give more quality with an equal or greater number of channels than conventional cable. It also makes the addition of On Demand services or additional channels relatively simple, since an additional channel doesn't require an allocation of 'to the curb' bandwidth when it's not being watched by anyone. In practice though, I expect Fiber-based and coax-based TV services to sink to the same levels of mediocrity.
"Ladies and gentlemen, my killbot features Lotus Notes and a machine gun. It is the finest available."
Any way to hook-up a MythTV box to one of these?
I'd like FIOS. A friend has it and loves it. But until they either open it up to other ISPs or provide a competitive price for static IPs, I'll have to stick to what I have. Too bad, as I'm also interested in FIOS TV as a replacement for our elderly DirecTV setup, but until they budge on the network issue, I won't be budging on the TV issue.
Ron
Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
Yes, they do offer a business service, with a static IP and no port blocking. It's about twice as expensive as the residential service at the same speeds.
However, there's some sort of dependency between the TV service and residential service. You can't get TV with a business internet account on the same Optical Network Terminal (ONT) at your premises. Some people have been successful in having a second ONT installed at their house.
Also..what if you don't need landline phone...they won't sell you fiber internet and/or tv if you don't get phone service too?
I don't believe you must have phone service, but I'm not sure. However, you do get a discount for the bundle.
When I saw that my new router had a coax connection, I completely choked. My brain immediately said, "What The FU*K!!! They're supporting 10Base2 again?" So, I asked the tech when he was installing my FiOS this weekend what's with the coax.
The reason why they're using coax, even for FiOS Internet, is because just about every house has coax in it because of their cable company! I was fortunate in that my house is a ranch-style with a four-inch gap in the walls, so one of the first things I did was wire my house up. It now has 21 network jacks installed throughout. I'm in the minority of people who can even do that -- but almost everyone has coax throughout their house. By going "back" to coax, Verizon is completely eliminating the need to lay out new cable or to use a comparatively slow wireless connection. They're using existing resources. Each TV will get a box that connects to the coax, just like a standard cable box. When FiOS TV becomes available, they run a coax cable from my FiOS box on the outside of my house to the cable box a few feet away and each TV gets a FiOS converter box.
As soon as he explained that, the coax connection on my FiOS router made total sense.
The Overrated mod is for reversing inappropriate, positive mods, not for voicing disagreement with a post.
I find the following quote very interesting.... "I chuckled a bit to myself. After all these years of the phone company having to lease out and let competitors use its phone lines and utility poles, Verizon was using a competitor's wiring (and the work they did to run it into my house). Sorry, Cablevision." I gotta say, he's just wrong. The cable lines in the house are owned by the homeowner, not the cable company. Just like the electrical wires in the home aren't owned by the power company. Cable companies have been using the existing phone wires in the house when they moved users over to digital phone/VOIP. It's simply the easiest and most non-intrusive way to set it all up, but if the author thinks that the verizon is using the cable companies lines, he's dead wrong. That would likely be illegal anyway.