Re: [Avid-L2] OT: Comcast, Uverse of FIOS?

It's a long story…

- Rich

Rich Ford
Hot Sprocket Films

On Aug 14, 2013, at 4:21 PM, johnrobmoore <bigfish@pacbell.net> wrote:

> What, What, What? How could you move so far away from OKI Dog? I don't think they deliver to Northeast Indiana. Have you thought this through? That is quite a sacrifice. Don't be calling me for an OKI fix at 3AM. Not sure how well a freeze dried OKI Dog travels but it might be worth investigating.
>
> --- In Avid-L2@yahoogroups.com, Rich Ford <rrfedit@...> wrote:
> >
> > Thank you Mark and everyone else who responded.
> >
> > It turns out that the semi-rural farm house we are moving to is definitely not served by FIOS and maybe not by Comcast (still trying to sort that out).
> >
> > There is a regional service here in Northeast Indiana called Metronet that looks promising (fiber all the way to the residence, internet plans up to 300 download / 65 upload), but they currently don't serve the farm house. They may come there soon tho.
> >
> > I just moved from San Diego, where I was spoiled by very good service with Cox Cable / Internet. I don't care about the land line part of it, just need TV and Internet. I have had Comcast in the past, and they were okay, but I think their quality & service varies by region. So far they haven't been great to deal with here.
> >
> > - Rich
> >
> > Rich Ford
> > Hot Sprocket Films
> >
> > On Aug 14, 2013, at 3:35 PM, MarkB <eatapc@...> wrote:
> >
> > > Rich, I had Comcast for many years, but switched to FIOS this year; I also have experience with U-verse, as my parents switched to the U-verse triple-play a few months ago, and I just spent two weeks at their house in Florida. Thoughts on all three below.
> > >
> > > 1) Avoid U-verse. It's so bad it borders on fraud. The HD picture is much more heavily pixelated than FIOS or Comcast; the internet speed is poor, particularly upload, which gave us only 1.5 mbps; the phones are problematic.
> > >
> > > The installers did not use any of the existing phone, DSL or cable wiring in my parent's house. Everything comes through ethernet to a modem that forms the hub of all services. The installers told my parents they could NOT keep their old number. They objected, and after many calls to supervisors, the installer was told to proceed with a new number, but that their old number would be restored in a week. It was restored -- as a separate charge on a separate bill. The new U-verse number is now non-operational, but they are paying for both numbers, and AT&T is clueless about consolidating the bill and having the unnecessary charge removed. The phone service works in three rooms -- the ones my parents use -- but the guest bedroom has a dead phone because AT&T didn't bother connecting it and my parents didn't notice.
> > >
> > > Besides the TV picture being inferior, the usability of the remote is subpar and the the channel guide layout is not good. There's no color coding for sports, movies, etc, which makes it difficult to browse through, and the scrolling is horribly slow.
> > >
> > > 2) I was OK with Comcast, although interruptions -- particularly to the phone service -- were frequent. I didn't like the Comcast DVRs because they were not "whole house." You have to watch on the box that recorded the show, not in a different room. (We had 4 boxes.)
> > >
> > > What finally caused me to switch was hurricane Sandy last year. All my neighbors with FIOS had their service restored as soon as the electricity came back. Not so with Comcast. I called every other day to find out when my service would be restored, and was often told that my service WAS restored. In the Comcast database, I was working, even though the Comcast wires wires hanging down in the street outside my house. Eventually one of my kids tweeted that Comcast sucks and we were switching to FIOS. Ironically, he got a reply from Verizon FIOS immediately, asking if we wanted to get a FIOS installer out to the house. An hour later, Comcast tweeted us back, saying that they'd like to escalate our issue. Gotta love Twitter! The Twitter dude from Comcast sent someone out the next day to get us working, but by then I had made up my mind to switch.
> > >
> > > 3) FIOS is very fast. I'm paying for 75/35 internet speed and I just now got 83/39 on SpeedTest via wi-fi (Airport). The HD picture is pretty similar to Comcast -- I can't declare a winner without doing a real side-by-side. The DVR is whole house, so we can record on one box and watch it anywhere, which is huge. We can watch more recordings plus live TV in different rooms than we could with Comcast. The channel guide is organized well, and the iPhone/iPad remote app is pretty good. Most important: We've only had one, brief service disruption this year; with Comcast at least one service would go out every month.
> > >
> > > I do have some complaints. I called Verizon to get FIOS service on a Saturday, and the truck was out at my house on Sunday morning. However, the installers couldn't get the phones to work. It took several days of calling and over a week to get the phones hooked up correctly. Happily, no new wiring was necessary; the existing AT&T and Comcast wires within our house were used. One other issue with Verizon's customer support: We did not get the channel package I wanted. Several days later I was able to get a customer support guy to fix our plan, except he didn't. When I finally got a woman who knew what she was doing and who got us on the right plan, the price was higher than what I had been quoted previously.
> > >
> > > The one DVR box we have has the usual small hard drive and is not upgradable. (But as with the Comcast box, it has a Firewire port on the back, which can be used with Apple's Firewire SDK to record an HD MPEG-2 video from the box to my laptop. I use it sometimes to "rip" a TV show at full broadcast res for clients.)
> > >
> > > The DVR functions on the iPad app are very limited. Even using the FIOS remote with the on-screen menu, the DVR is needlessly difficult to program. I defy anyone to record a cable series on HBO, Showtime or AMC in a "repeat" time slot without also recording duplicates. Too much fiddling, too little automatic control, and some of the choices are deeply buried in the menu and not intuitive. Also, no master on/off button on the basic remote.
> > >
> > > The supplied wireless router is an incredibly bad POS. The range sucks, and it cuts the speed in half even if my laptop is within a few feet of it. Solution: I ran an ethernet cable over to an Apple Airport Extreme, then set it up as a separate network. The speed essentially doubled over wi-fi, both up and down, using SpeedTest. To confirm the FIOS speed, I also used an ethernet cable straight into the laptop, turning wi-fi off, and got the same speed as with the Airport's wi-fi (within a tenth or two, both directions). In actual use, it's consistently close to 85/40 with either ethernet or Airport. Lesson: No matter which service you go with, get an Airport Extreme or top-of-the-line Cisco/Linksys router; don't bother using the supplied wi-fi.
> > >
> > > Take care -- Mark Block
> > > markblockedit.com
> > >
> > > --- In Avid-L2@yahoogroups.com, Rich Ford <rrfedit@> wrote:
> > > >
> > > > Anyone have comments, good or bad, on Comcast vs. ATT Uverse vs. Veriizon FIOS for internet and cable TV?
> > > >
> > > > - Rich
> > > >
> > > > Rich Ford
> > > > Hot Sprocket Films
> > > >
> > > >
> > > >
> > > > [Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
> > > >
> > >
> > >
> >
> >
> >
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>



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