FIOS TV Review: Part Two

It's been over a week since I posted my initial FIOS TV experience - time for an update. A Verizon technician (not a contractor) was scheduled to arrive on Sunday afternoon, after 1 p.m. I arrived home at 12:30 to discover that he'd already been at the house and left. A quick call to his cell phone uncovered that he'd been told that the work needed to be done before 1 p.m. By 2 p.m. he was back at the house and began investigating our non-functional TV service.

There were several calls to the a center where they can perform remote diagnostics on the Set Top Boxes (STB) attached to the televisions. They were unable to get a consistent reading from the boxes. Several resets were attempted, renewal of the service, but nothing seemed to work. The technician them placed one of his diagnostic tools on the cable from the FIOS box that is attached to the side of the house. He discovered that the box wasn't sending a proper signal. It seems that after one day of service, the TV module in the box had failed. The technician then replaced the entire box - having to disconnect and reconnect our phones, Internet, and TV services.

We've been using FIOS TV for one week since the fix.

I have the following observations:

1) Good: The picture is better than Comcast. It appears to have more detail, contrast, with less pixelation.

2) Bad: The picture sometimes stutters. I'm not sure what causes this, but sometimes the picture will freeze (about every 10 to 15 seconds) for about a second. It seems to be in this mode until the channel is somehow refreshed. It's incredibly irritating - not sure what is happening there.

3) Good: The phone and Internet services appear to be running quite well. The Internet package we have currently is 20/5 mbps and it consistently maintains this speed.

4) Undecided: The on-screen guide is more difficult for me to read than the old Comcast guide. It might be the number of available channels (much more now), the intermingling of free / pay channels, the font size... I'm not exactly sure, but I have been trying to use a "favorites" list to reduce the noise. Still, it is more difficult to navigate, even if it is only because I had become used to the Comcast guide.

So, is it better than Comcast? Usually. Was it worth the switch? For me, "Yes." However, I'm a nerd and there's a certain "coolness" to having a high speed digital fiber connected to the side of the house... even if it's just a subject evaluation...