So, we made the switch to Verizon FIOS this week.
I had been checking the FIOS availablity page every few months to no avail. The towns next door to us had had FIOS for over a year. Then finally last week I happened to check and suddenly it was available.
We were surprised by how much money we could save with the phone/internet/cable service, even with a ton of premium cable channels and a faster internet plan and signed up right away. However, we ended up having to speak with Verizon sales three different times on three different days to get our order right. We found out the third time that the order wasn't done right at all, and instead of a multi-stream cable card (for my TiVo HD) and a regular cable box, they were going to send us an HD cable box and a regular cable box. By the third phone sales person, though, we finally got someone who actually knew what a TiVo was and what a cable card was, and set up the order properly.
On the day of installation, the installation guy actually showed up on time. A short while later, a second guy came to help him set up service outside and in the basement. A couple of hours later a third guy came to help with setting up the cable card for the TiVo since the other two had never done it before.
So, we had a little FIOS party with three guys from about 9 a.m. to 2 p.m. When the left, everything was working pretty much flawlessly. I've used the router they force you to have before, so configuring it was no problem.
The first night of watching TV I started to notice an issue. My HD on certain channels would come in choppy and sometimes not at all. After some google searching I found this:
"Verizon FiOS (Series3 and TiVo HD only): If you are using a Series3 or TiVo HD DVR with Verizon FiOS, you may need to use a signal attenuator to decrease the strength of the signal before it enters the DVR. You may also want to use a low pass filter or diplexer to avoid macroblocking. Please contact Verizon Customer Support for more information or see Picture quality issues with Verizon FiOS service."
So, I was able to fix the issue, right? Wrong. This post has been a draft for about a week now. Thats because my TiVo still isn't working properly. I'm still getting skipping and freezing on my HD channels all of the time. After trying all kinds of different combinations of attenuators to decrease the signal strength to the perfect level, I've finally given up with that and Verizon is overnighting me a new cable card. I'll post how that goes next week....
Update
Finally got a new TiVo, and the problem has been solved. Woohoo! FIOS, all in all, is fabulous.
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