Does the DVR have any external ports to save recordings to e-sata
drives? or network computers?
Once it is on coax will any digital tuner work or do you need a Verizon Box?
Mike
Jeff Wright wrote:
Keep me informed. I'm pleased that you were able to get through
but I'm very concerned that it wasn't easier.
I am particularly interested in knowing how smoothly the installation
goes and what your opinion of the product is.
Following up on this from a couple weeks ago at Eric's request.
The FIOS install went very smoothly. Long, 6 hours (!), but that involved
the following:
-Pulling a line from the street.
-Installing the ONT (Optical Network Interface) on the house.
-Drilling through the outside wall to run the coax from the ONT (a bit
nervous there, but the installer was very neat and sealed the hole
afterwards).
-Attaching to the inside phone wiring.
-Installing the inside terminal w/ the battery backup.
-Running new coax inside the house for TV (2 sets).
-Needed to run back to the distribution node, a street over, to get the
phone working
-Installed the router, which is wireless with a 4-port wired internal hub.
The installer was cool with me going into the router interface and turning
off the wireless, since I already have a wireless network. NOTE: The
default setting is for WEP (Weally Extra Pathetic) encryption, and you have
to hunt around, but you can enable WPA2. There is also a built-in firewall,
so if you don't have one already (I already have a hardware firewall), this
could be used, but it's off by default.
-It took a while to get my main PC to come up on the router. I forgot that
I had given it a static IP a while back while troubleshooting an
intermittent connection.
-Confirmed that the all 3 services were working and programmed the TV
remotes.
-Gave a quick primer on the DVR component. I will say that I love having
this. I never had a Tivo before, but I suspect that I'll keep this after
the freebie year is up. It's an 80 hour model made by Motorola.
As far as the FIOS service goes, it is excellent, far and away better than
Comcast, by miles. The TV guide interface makes the Comcast interface look
like DOS. Verizon's is colorful and easy to read, responsive and works much
better. I used pay-per-view on Comcast a couple times and it was awful.
Terrible, grainy video quality and the unit would reply to button presses
(pause, play, FF) a few seconds after the button was pressed. That can get
old quickly. The FIOS DVR is almost DVD player quick. The TV picture
(standard definition) and vastly better than Comcast's with none of the
annoying pixilation and drop outs we would get regularly.
Phone service is clear and it's nice to have caller ID after not having it
for years. Internet service is quick; I got the 10 Mb down/2 Mb up service,
but can upgrade all the way up to 20/10 (for $150/month...no thanks). I
did, however, have a significant DNS lag when surfing at first. That may
have had more to do with my internal network setup, since after futzing with
IPs and subnets for about an hour one night, the lag went away.
The only downside is having to memorize the new channel numbers. That'll
take a couple more weeks. But, unlike Comcast, the channels are grouped by
genre mostly, with a few exceptions, and that makes it easier to avoid the
chick channels (all 10 of them!). ;-) Notable additions are Boomerang,
which my kids love, and American Life, which shows all the stuff from the
60's and 70's that TVLand doesn't (which is just about everything except
Andy Griffith and Lucy). Am Life shows The Green Hornet, which I don't
think I've seen since it was on originally. Oh yeah, plus the Speed
channel, the NFL channel and Fox Soccer.
Oh, and I'm saving about $80/month over how everything was previously (that
will go down a bit after a year...sigh...) Sayonara, Comcast (and AT&T long
distance)! We won't miss you!
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*Mike Drabick
HDH Construction Consultants, Inc
200 Harry S. Truman Parkway
Suite 220
Annapolis, MD 21401
410-571-1100
410-571-1177 Fax*
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