New DVR

reset, reset, reset, reset, reset, reset, reset, reset

Service Appointment Made

Tech shows up 1 day EARLY

I wasn't Home

Service Appointment Closed

New Service Appointment Made for Saturday...

Fingers X'd

The FiOS DVR was terrible when I had it. Thats why I switched to TiVo instead of using the FiOS DVR. I use four TiVos now with FiOS now and have zero problems. Plus I'm able to transfer any recordings between those TiVos or to a PC for permanent storage. And with the TiVo you can expand the storage capacity, unlike the FiOS DVR. I have a 1TB drive is in each TiVo which makes things nice since I don't have to worry about deleting something every few days like with he FIOS DVR and it's small hard drive.

Isolated issue.

You obviously have some thing interfering with RF near by, I can change my channel from outside of my house, 20-30 feet away using a I've had Verizon FiOS since it launched with the same DVR.

Only complaint is the delay when attempting to navigate the on-demand stuff, small sacrifice to pay, it's been getting better.

I've had FIOS DVR for almost 2 years...and have hated it every single day. Just saving up enough $$ to buy the Tivo HD XL w/ lifetime subscription. My issues with FIOS DVR are:
1) Crappy interface...way to many clicks to get to what you want
2) Interactive Guide is just stupid...only 7 to 8 days of data
3) Search is just stupid...can't search or set up recordings by topic
4) Doesn't really delete recordings...you have to reboot the DVR to get them off a lot of times
5) You can't go back and undelete something you accidentally deleted
6) Once a recording starts, you can't change the end time of the recording...for football games this is a must. The only option is to ALWAYS record an extra hour...oh and since it sometimes doesn't delete recordings, you run out of space even faster.
7) Not really a problem with the DVR, just FIOS in general...99% of what I would want to view "on demand" isnt available on demand.
8) You can't interface with your home computer and store recordings there.

And the list goes on and on. TIVO is definitely the head of the DVR class, you'd think the competitors would at least TRY to mimic them. I've almost got enough $$ to make the switch...I can't wait.

The FiOS DVR has 2 tuners but has the idiotic habit of starting a recording 1 minute before a show you want actually starts. This means that it can't record things on 2 channels right before the new show is to be recorded.

There is supposed to be a 60 minute 'buffer', but if you pause a show it will un-pause itself after around 20 minutes and go to live TV. You have to rewind to get back to where you paused it.

If you were watching a show and decide you want to record it after a while, even though the whole show is in the buffer if you press record is dumps the buffer and starts recording from the live point.

Interface responsiveness is a joke and the remote that comes with it sucks. I pulled out my 10 year old Sony universal remote from the closet and was much happier.

So, hardware is 'meh', Software sucks.

the people at verizon make firmwares that tend to use all of the routers 32MB of ram just to load the bloat of the firmware and theres little or no memory to offer resources for making connections, and since the router doesn't have a proper idle connection dropper set, the router quickly runs out of memory and needs to be restarted quite often. People have this problem with pretty much all of the routers from verizon, for standard DSL when they had the actiontec gt704wg, I was able to replace the crappy firmware with the generic stock firmware that was made by actiontec, and it fixed all of the problems I had with the router except the poor wireless range (but this was enough to hold me over until I could get a linksys wrt54gl and put the actiontec into transparent bridge and have the linksys handle all of the routing.

Now with fios, the ONT allows me to directly connect to it so I am having no problems at all, in the comment I posted for the user above you, I posted what I did to improve my fios service be a lot.

PS actiontec did not release a generic firmware for the new actiontec gateways for the fios service.

That said, the FIOS service itself is GREAT. I've had it for nearing three years (Northern VA), and it's superior to the local Comcast service in nearly every way-- FAR faster internet, better price for services, and beautiful HD.

Oh, and yeah: I can count on one hand the times I've lost service in three years. I'd need a few dozen more hands to account for the poor reliability of the Comcast, it was out all the time (not to mention the broadband got throttled, and throttled *hard* towards the end there; I can't imagine how bad it must be now given the popularity of broadband around here).

Anyway, while I applaud the focus on the bad FIOS DVR equipment, *please* find time to focus on their TRULY abysmal Actiontec routers. Just terrible equipment-- buggy, poor wireless signal, and requiring constant resets. I'd love to just go out and buy my own router and be done with it, but alas, FIOS only works with Verizon's exceptionally crappy equipment.

Oh well. . . one day, I will have perfect TV and Internet. . .

a easy way to fix the ondemand problem is to get a different router. I recommend the linksys wrt54gl and make sure your ONT is using ethernet instead of coax

Then after that, install a good firmware onto the router such as tomato

then on the verizon backup your settings (it saves a cfg file just in case) then do this, disable it's wifi and also disable it's firewall and also disable the DHCP on the verizon router, after that, set both the coax lan and the ethernet lan to bridged

then connect a ethernet cable from ethernet port 1 of the verizon router, to ethernet port 4 of the linksys router.

after that power cycle the verizon router then power cycle the DVR, if your using tomato firmware, the DVR will now appear in the device list

you can now assign the DVR a static IP address

after you assign it a static ip

then head to the port forward settings in tomato
then forward for both TCP and UDP, port 63100-63200 (for the IP address of the DVR)

the dvr will now get all ondemand and other special dvr services and features through the linksys router.

and your computers that will now also be connected directly to the linksys router will notice that the ping may be 20-50% lower and your bandwidth speed test will reach closer to to the advertised speeds

you also wont really have to worry about restarting the router (had tomato running non stop with no restarts for nearly a year now, it is a very stable linux distro/firmware for a router, it also has a much more advanced and better performing QOS, and unlike the action crap that verizon gives, the linksys running tomato is actually able to properly multitask, you can have 2 tv's in the house both streaming HD ondemand content (using around 40mbit/s of bandwidth through the router, and still get your advertised internet speed test speeds and no effect on your ping. if this was done going directly through the verizon router with coax (no linksys), the speed test results would be a little lower than normal and your ping will be much higher, the tomato firmware also has a better firewall, and supports both SD card slots and USB ports depending on which hardware mods you do the router, (you can do both and even run a web server and host a website through the router if needed, or you can install a bit torrent program directly into the router and have the router download torrents to a network folder or a flash drive or sd card or many other things.

it is annoying that verizon makes it so users have to go through so many annoying steps to use a better router that actually works like it's suppose to.

I have had the FiOS TV service for a couple of years. I will say that the DVR does seem to "crash" more frequently than the Comcast TVR that it replaced (I basically can not access On-Demand). It usually is easy to fix, I just cycle the power on my router, NID and Set top boxes and wait for the DRV to acquire a new IP address. It is a minor inconvenience which has become more stable over time. Verizon is also pushing the envelope in the capabilities that the DVR has (compared to what Comcast is doing), and I am able to play games, search traffic and weather widgets, and look at photos installed on my PC installed in the other room. Yes I realize that other DVR solutions do this and do it well, but for someone who does not want to be bothered with a home theatre PC or Tivo it work well, and I am happy to put up with a few issues to receive otherwise excellent customer service and products.

@runchadrun: If you have not done so already, you might want to look at their remote DVR website where you can "administer" your DVRs from any computer connected to the internet. Great for when you are away from home and realize that you forgot to set the DVR up to record your favorite show.

I have found that if you plug in the Fios box to a 220 volt circuit the box will start smoking and you can hear sounds like bacon frying. The box will work just as poorly as before but you feel better. As a sidelight, Fios advertises "Watch any recorded program in any room!". They just don't bother to tell you that you have no pause, no Fast Forward, no back-up, and almost no control other than on and off.

Record a Hi-Definition show and then go out an buy a Hi-Def TV to watch it on because if you don't have one you can't watch the show at all if in another room.

Seriously, I have FiOS w/ CableCards and a TiVoHD. They work great together.

I'm not sure how many extras you're trying to get working, but I went as KISS as possible.

2 x analog tuners (using PVR-150s)
1 x IR blasted cable box (using PVR-350 and serial IR blaster)
1 x _OLD_ 440 MX NVIDIA card with TV-Out
2 x 500 GB IDE HDDs (RAIDed)
2 x P4 Xeon CPUs (Overkill, but they came with the box, and the box was only $25...)
1 GB RAM
Slackware 12.0 for the base OS (I need to upgrade this thing again someday!)

The only features I use are the ability to record shows (duh!) and viewing .avi/.mkv files via mplayer.

DVD viewing et al I use the appropriate separate hardware for. :)

Only softs to install are (IN THIS ORDER!):

- Nvidia drivers
- lirc
- mplayer
- mysql if it didn't come with it
- mythtv
- mythtv-themes
- mythtv-plugins

None of these required any special hacking, just ./configure && make && make install.

From there all you need to do is just configure and go. IR blasting will take a small amount of additional work, of course, but that's the case anywhere.

But, yes, I wouldn't be surprised if you're finding the web plugins and audio pluging suck. I just don't care about them and left them to rot. :)

@DreamTheEndless:

Sorry. Yes, I have tv/phone/internet through FIOS. The DVR is great and I've never had an issue. The only problem I've had is that the channels didn't seem to update and it turns out the problem was with the router (had to power cycle it once and haven't had another problem).

Remotes are good too, as long as the batteries are charged.

@larrymac: The first comcast DVR I had sucked but the one we have now works pretty well.

Although Fios has WAY better HDTV than comcast, there are still a few bugs it needs to work out from what I have seen at my friends houses.

1 - interface

2 - on demand selection

I haven't heard them complain about DVR issues.

@FigNinja: Same here. My Uverse DVR beat out the Tivo I used to use (partially because Tivo apparently sucks at getting it to work with Uverse in the first place). Generally, I am extraordinarily happy with the Uverse service in general.

I've had Fios for about 2 years with 2 seperate DVR boxes. The only problem I had was about 6 months ago. The DVR would show 40% full with nothing recorded. I would call Fios to have it reset. I did this a couple of times and it's been working fine since.
I'm pretty happy with the service.
jimcarm

I know thats causing some of the lag. it s bad firmware.

the STB's only have around a 350MHz processor in them and about 32MB memory. the STB's are also running lots of services including black ice firewall and a few other security programs as well as a web server (kinda like the 192.168.1.1 router pages but only verizon knows the user name and password and they don't give it out)

All of this on a 350MHz box that is trying to do HD = lag, especially when a remote STB is trying to also access a recording.

There is no reason for this lag other than bad firmware. Verizon has a history of bad firmware. For my DSL gateway, it was a actiontec gt704wg, the verizon firmware was insecure, the admin page and telnet page was accessable from over the internet, no matter what password you set, the default admin password will allow you to log in for telnet (so you can basically guess out a random IP in the netblock then log into the gateway then change a users DNS settings to redirect them to phishing sites (dns server changes done in telnet are not effected in the web UI ) the firmware was also buggy and had memory leaks and they had to be frequently restarted or they would slow down.

the same happens with fios service (but with the fios gateways at least they fixed the problem with the impossible to disable remote access.

Verizon has never made a good firmware.

When i contacted motorola about the DVR, on their own firmware, all of the features including the USB and exporting videos and streaming video files from a flash drive on the STB worked, the remote dvr features also are suppose to allow pausing and rewinding of live tv on remote STB's, but since verizon uses their own firmware and their own encryption, they disabled all of the extra features that the box has and bloated it with useless things, the STB does not need it's own firewall running because the router has a fully working SPI firewall already.

lucky for me and the few who i have fixed fios service for, I was able to get the verizon crap gateway running behind of a linksys wrt54gl running tomato firmware. this allows all of the dvr and STB features to work but the users don't have to worry about being stuck with the crappy verizon crap when connecting their computers online.

Verizon told me that they hope to fix some of the performance issues in the next firmware update but that may never happen.

When I called them about the remote DVR problems with the long delays, they tried blaming it on limited bandwidth between the STB's which is a lie because it only uses just under 5Mbit/s to stream SD video to another STB, the problem is just buggy firmware thats not optimized for performance.

The issue with the 1s blacked out screen is not unique to you, I get it as well with my Tivo.. which for the record if I use my 30 second skip over the blackout screen, it stays blacked out till I use the 15 second rewind function.

The problem, if you have not noticed, is when Verizon switches from the national broadcast ads, to the local ones, and then back again, so I get it twice every ad run, but only on the HD channels. This is relatively new as well, last month or so (I have had FIOS since day one when they released it in the PG County MD area)

When I had TWC, the SciAtl 8300HD was one of the best DVR's Ive ever owned. In the 4 years that I had it it never gave me an ounce of trouble. I miss that DVR.

@itsallme: Same deal. Most cable companies provide their customers with refurbished units - and typically these "refurbished" units are the ones people returned with problems and are given right back out since the demand is typically high. The problem/failure rate with these rented units are high since no one ever gets a new box and I doubt most actually get refurbed. Though, like you, I have gone through 6-7 boxes now, and now my current one is giving up the ghost. I've been comtemplating calling TW now for a few days, I guess I finalyl should and hope for the best... or at least hope for one of the new Samsung DVRs.

Sure, it's probably not as slick as a Tivo, but it has worked well, and I don't feel like paying the extra to get a Tivo. Plus, I like having OnDemand. My dearest wish is for a bigger hard drive, though.

I have two single-room DVRs with FIOS and don't have a problem with either of them.

I did have problems with my DVRs when I had Comcast, but they always seemed to coinside with my allowing the unit's memory to get past 70% full.

Do you get television from FIOS? (yes/no)
Do you have a set top DVR from FIOS? (yes/no)

If yes to both, how does the DVR perform for you?

Then after many problems with Dish Network itself (the CS is horrendous) I switched to Comcast (believe it or not better CS than Dish Network) and got a Scientific Atlanta receiver/HDTV DVR that is a giant POS... and apparently thanks to some ancient deal Comcast made when they bought the local cable company where I live they are required to use Scientific Atlanta for all their equipment (even their cable modem sucks).

I hate Scientific Atlanta.

This isn't a TV specific problem, or an HDMI specific problem, because it also occurs w/ other boxes in the house that are remotely playing a program recorded on the 72xx DVR.

I requested a replacement box from Verizon, they said they would ship me one... that night at 8PM I get a call from VZ telling me that I have a tech scheduled to arrive the next day between 8AM and 5PM if I can't be there for the tech then I need to call them back--after I spend about 5 mins laughing over that ridiculous 9 hour window I'm supposed to wait for I attempt to call them back--well, oops, they're closed at 8PM-ET so there was actually no way I could have called them back to cancel this appt that I never scheduled in the first place.

I basically forget about the issue since I've been living w/ it for some time already--about 2 weeks later a broken down cardboard box arrives w/ instructions on how to return my equipment---------so they sent the shipping to retrieve my old DVR but never provided a replacement.

I won't even get into the insane billing issues I've had w/ an account that is basically a simple "double play".

But you can't beat 25/15 internet or the volume of channels available.

My Verizon DVR, a single room version that receives fairly heavy recording use between Barney shows for my two year old and the various Disney teen soap operas my 13 year old daughter watches, works fine as well generally.

I have had it crash on a couple rare occasions however when the remote just stopped accepting signals and it simply crashed and rebooted automatically. Afterwards it was fine.

The worst thing about mine I can think of is that I wish however the scrolling through the guide was a bit faster: I can scroll up and down and it seems to take way too long of a time for the channel info to catch up and appear-this is more annoying than I describe it, but all in all, it's not even close to a show stopper.

C-

If you really want to see god awful equipment, look no further than Comcast's Scientific Atlanta DVR boxes (now branded Cisco). I swear the interface was written in DOS and made to run on an Atari 2600's resolution...

Also, if you have some techsavvy, pretty easy to get in there and fix if you do manage to break it, too.

Other than that, no complaints at all.

Hated our DVRs so much, we got TivoHD units with cablecards. Havent looked back since!

Isolated incident. My FIOS service is excellent. No problems in over a year, other than my messing up the router and having to get a new one.

For whatever reason, the Motorola architecture doesn't seem to be able to adapt itself to DVR use.