I recently (two weeks ago) switched from Comcast to Verizon FiOS TV in the Portland, OR area and I have mixed feelings about it. There are several things that are better, but also many that are worse than Comcast.
I'll get the bad things out of the way... and maybe I'm wrong about a few of them:
CONS
-- My most expensive Mitsubishi TV that has worked fine on everthing via HDMI for the past 6 months (Comcast Motorola HD DVR, PS3, Wii, Wireless Media Extender) will not work via HDMI with the Verizon Motorola STB. Green screen of death. I don't have any optical audio cables, so I'm currently running with component cables and regular audio (which sucks). This is horrible.
-- Changing channels sometimes doesn't work. This happens when I'm flipping through channels using the Channel +/- buttons. I'll hit + and the on screen display will say it has changed channels, but the previous channel's video and audio are still on the screen. I have to change to the next channel and backagain to get it to synch up. This happens a lot.
-- The DVR skip buttons are nearly worthless to the impatient (read: me). If you hit the skip button too fast, it either doesn't skip at all or causes thevideo to go blank. On my other TV which is working via HDMI, this makes it have a green screen of death and I have to turn the TV off and back on. This is a big deal for me. I'm used to hitting the skip button quickly a set number of times to skip past known lenghts of commercial breaks. I simply can't do that with Verizon. I have to hit the skip, wait a couple of seconds, hit the skip again, wait a couple of seconds, hit the skip again, oops... it didn't skip... I must not have waited long enough, hit skip again. THIS IS INFURIATING.
-- If I have rewound back into a certain channel's buffer, as far as I can tell there is no way to immediately return to live TV. Comcast's remote had a LIVE button that would skip to the end of the buffer without clearing it. The only way I've figured out to do it is change channels then come back to the original channel, but this sometimes clears the buffer so thatisn't acceptable.
-- I can't adjust the end time of an already recording program. This comes up frequently, especially with sporting events and programs that have been delayed because of sporting events preceding them. I'll sit down in the middle of a show and start playing the recording from the beginning but notice the basketball game before it is still finishing. I want to extend the end time of the recording so I can start watching it immediately from the end of the basketball game and not have to worry about whether it will be in the buffer or not.
-- If I have two succesive shows set to record, there are several seconds dropped between the two shows in the recordings. Comcast would miss one maybe two seconds... Verizon misses almost 10. Why does this matter? Well, sometimes shows run a little long and with Comcast I would be guaranteed to see the end of that program on the beginning of the next recording. Not so with Verizon. For example, The Daily Show and The Colbert Report. Frequently the "moment of zen" at the end of The Daily Show is a few seconds after the end time of the show. I could always see it at the beginning of the Colbert Report recording with Comcast. Now it is completely gone on the Verizon recordings. South Parkalways runs several seconds long, but now I miss the end of every episode because it's not at the beginning of the Reno 911 recording. THIS IS REALLY INFURIATING.
-- Whether or not a show is New is not easily discernable from the guide. The "New" icon needs to be one of the ones that show up in the guide listing, not just the info screen. Having to hit the Info button to tell if a show is new or not really annoys me.
-- The DVR does not offer to automatically extend the end time for live events as Comcast's did. I have to go through several annoying steps to extend the end time.
PROS
-- I can record sporting events as a series, which Comcast didn't let me do. This is great! I no longer have to go through the guide and manually record English Premier League, Champions League or MLS games. I just set up series recordings. This, I REALLY like.
-- The channel selection is way better (more HD, more music, more sports)
-- I don't have to buy the entire latin language channel package just to get Gol TV which has english audio too. THANK YOU!
-- The series recordings do a much better job with cable shows that repeat a gazillion times a week than Comcast's did. I couldn't even set many cable shows to be series recordings on Comcast or it would fill up my DVR. THIS IS EXCELLENT.
-- Changing what series are being recorded or their priority doesn't cause all the shows you removed from the recording schedule to magically appear back in the schedule to be recorded like Comcast's DVR does. THIS ROCKS.
So, there are several things I like a lot better than Comcast but there are also manythings I hate about Verizon so far. Coupled with the fact that my FiOS router just stopped working last night (blinking red light)requiring a new router to be sent meaning I'll have no internet all weekend (I'm at work right now), the fact that they still haven't buried the fiber and the fact that the installer lied to me about the green screen of death on my Mitsubishi,I'm seriously second guessing my decision to switch.
