Bummer. Would it be possible to rig up one of the Moxi Mates as a second input to a PIP TV? The problem with that setup is usually a lack of IR codes to control the devices independently, but I thought I'd ask.

You could definitely do that, but you guessed right. There is no way to assign remote codes to one box and not the other. The DVR and Mate use identical remote controls.

There are physical buttons on the front of the units. Off the top of my head, they have a d-pad with select button and the menu button. This should allow you to do almost anything without the remote control.

Just so you know, I'm not a Moxi evangelist. The only reason I settled on it was the superior multi-room setup. I wanted to rent only one cablecard, and this was the only way to do this (with a CE device). My other option was two Tivo Premieres with lifetime which would have cost more money up-front and require two cablecards. The Premiere was also getting poor reviews for its UI speed at the time of my Moxi purchase.

I'm surprised that Tivo still hasn't gotten the Premiere working smoothly. I'm also not fond of the ads in menus and during trickplay my friend's S3 Tivos have. The Moxi is 100% ad-free and trickplay on the DVR is fast. It's not as fast as Tivo, but it's faster than the HR20-23 series of DirecTV DVRs.

I'm anxious to see what comes from Microsoft in the form of a more consumer-oriented DVR solution. I'm also up for seeing what Tivo is going to do, but I'm really against paying them gobs of money and then having ads fed to me. I don't anticipate Moxi coming out with another retail box. It seems Arris bought Moxi from Digeo to get their IP. This 6-tuner DVR/media gateway for cable operators is the first product to come from this union.

I don't think I mentioned it yet, but Moxi lacks a wishlist-type function. This could be a deal-breaker for some.

I'm surprised that this type of device at this price point doesn't include multiple IR codesets. The issue is pretty easy to solve in any case, though not necessarily for free or cheaply.

Right off the bat, my first recommendation would be to use a remote that support RF communication with a base-station that has IR transmitters. SUch as one of URC's Complete Control line along with its MRF base. That way you can use stick-on emitters to each device and both will receive the same kinds of codes, while still addressing them individually via the remote setup.

Does anyone know if Tivo has ironed out those speed issues with the Premiere UI yet? I'd heard the same complaints at first, but I was under the impression that this had been addressed. Wasn't it due to something like one of the CPUs/cores not being utilized for some reason?

I've never been certain why some things are so slow on the Tivo UI. I would think that if you have a box capable of recording two HD streams while playing back a third, it would be more than capable of, for example, recalculating your recording schedule when you change the priority of a season pass (typically the slowest the Tivo ever gets).

But it sounds like the Premiere UI is even slower. I wonder if any of that is due to the live TV playback in the menus, which is the first thing I'd turn off if I had a Premiere...

Recording and playback don't use the CPU, but rely on dedicated silicon. A database operation though is going to hit the CPU - what's in there anyway?

I just upgraded from a URC remote to a Harmony 670, and though I'm not thrilled with the Harmony, it's certainly a step up from the older URC I had. The Complete Control lineup seems very steeply priced and terribly designed, and probably work with my PS3 without some more hackery. It would solve the PIP problem, but by the time I get there, I've negated the cost savings from switching, which is the whole reason I opened up this can of worms.

If I'm willing to drop down to just the multi-room DVR and one additional set-top box, I can get my bill down by about $40 a month, and get faster FiOS internet service as well, so PIP might have to go -- it certainly ain't worth $40/month.

The one thing I'm curious about -- do the regular FiOS STBs send output over multiple outputs (where one of the outputs is coax) at the same time? If so, I could locate the main multi-room DVR in our living room, put the regular STB in my game room, and then run coax from the STB in the game room up to our bedroom. Then, with a RF/IR remote extender, the signal from the regular STB would be available on the TV downstairs (over RCA or S-video) and upstairs (over the coax.) Would that work?

A Broadcom BCM7038 SoC, which incorporates a 300MHz MIPS CPU. The Premiere has a 400MHz dual-core MIPS.

Honestly, I simply cannot remember if it outputs on multiple connections. I want to say that it does. However, I've never hooked one up with a coax output before, so I don't know if that's any different.

I've never used PiP. I'm curious, what do you use it for? I can see it being useful if you're switching your viewing between two channels, and want to know when the other one gets back from a commercial break. Personally, I tend to only watch one thing at a time, and I'd estimate that other than sports and awards shows, 99% of my TV watching is time-shifted, making PiP kind of impossible (or at least useless). Even when it comes to sports and awards shows, I'm usually watching on a delay if nobody else watching minds.


Ah, wasn't aware that was how Tivo did it. Still, from what I'm reading, it's looking like Tivo hasn't turned on the dual-core functionality of their Premiere boxes' CPUs. There are lots of frustrated users out there.

The more I think about it, the more excited I am at the prospect of that possible multi-room Tivo product. I'm extremely curious what they're working on. Conceivably, the remote boxes (as opposed to the central box) wouldn't need a coax line, so they could go anywhere your home network could reach. For example, we can't have a TV in our office because the coax line in here is being used for our modem.

I'll definitely be keeping an eye out for any more news on that potential product. I didn't feel a need to upgrade to the Premiere as it doesn't give a Series 3 or TivoHD owner much added functionality, but a true multi-room product is something I'd definitely be interested in purchasing.

Bitt, how do I get on that survey? I've been a Tivo customer for 10 years now, but I don't get those emails...

There are two basic use cases:

1. There are two live sporting events I'm interested in watching at the same time. I can pull them both up and when one goes to commercial or is at halftime, I switch to the other.

2. My wife is watching something, and there's a game on that I want to watch. I'll let her watch her thing with audio and I'll watch on the other half without audio (because that's the kind of guy I am.) This obviously changes if it's a playoff game or whatever.

But if you're recording both channels, that situation is largely unimportant. You can just jump back and forth between programs all you want and skip the commercials.

Unless of course you want to actually view two things on the same screen at the same time as Tony mentions. Personally, I get bothered by watermarks and other on-screen graphics, so a PIP rect would probably drive me up the wall.

It's more convenient to be able to stream the second channel to a device like an iPad.

My old series 2 Tivo outputs on all outputs simultaneously.

Ah yes, I've applied to that every once and a while, but of course have never gotten in. Darn...

My decision has been made. I've got Verizon coming out in a couple weeks to install FiOS TV and a simple two-TV setup (one multi-room DVR, one regular STB to connect to it.) I'll connect the other TVs to the additional outputs of those as needed. I'll end up saving money while getting more HD channels, faster internet, and hopefully still have a good DVR interface to work with, but we'll see about that.

One annoying thing I wasn't prepared for is the complexity of the billing, and the obfuscation involved in hiding the true cost from the end user. I'm sort of used to these things from my dealings with Comcast, and to some extent all providers do it, but it was particularly difficult with Verizon to compare plans and figure out the real cost of their plans. They give you all sorts of different credits for different time periods, and then when things expire, you might or might not be able to get those credits renewed.

I ended up going with their middle-tier "Double Play" internet and TV bundle. The normal price of the services without the bundle credit is $119.99, but they offer $25 off for 24 months, and also $10 off for the first six months. That's all before paying for the equipment -- which costs $19.99 for the DVR and $8 for the other set-top box.

So, if I just look at the first six months, my bill is very low -- about $110/month before taxes and whatnot. But, averaged out over the 24-month period (during which I doubt they'd give me any additional discount) it ends up being closer to $120. This is still around $30 less than my combined bill now between the two providers, so it's still worth doing, but doing all the math to figure that out (and then comparing it to the Triple Play deals with phone service) ended up being a real hassle.

Then, as if that wasn't enough of a hassle, I got distracted by a "Free multi-room DVR for life" deal that would have been awesome, but is only available in the NYC area (I would have known this if I'd read the fine print.)

The bright side is that there's no contract commitment at all, so I should have some leverage if my bill ends up going up anytime soon. The hassle involved will be frustrating, but if I can save $30/month and go from 15/2 to 25/25 internet, it's worth it.

I'll report back with my findings in a few weeks.

Any caps on the internet? The way billing is going today, it's the caps that I end up looking at when comparing service, because depending on what you want to do and when you want to do it, the difference in download speed can be irrelevant.

50 Megabit down with no caps is $200/month where I am now just for internet (cable). That's for a business plan, as there's no such thing as unlimited consumer/home internet in Ontario from any provider.

As far as Fibre, you can get 25/7 if you're lucky here. But capped at 75GB a month and starting at $72 per month plus at least 13% tax. You can save a bit by bundling, but then you're paying through the nose for other services that are a fraction of the cost elsewhere. 120GB additional bandwidth for $15 plus tax.

Supposedly a new 50/10 with 100GB cap coming for Ontario from Bell starting at $111 per month.

The other thing with Bell is you're lucky to ever get their advertised speed for any appreciable part of the month. My 7 megabit advertised connection right now with our local cable provider gets a solid 8 megabits any time of day, every day, every month.

I'm not aware of any usage caps or throttles being imposed on FiOS users, although I can't say for certain they don't exist. I know that I'm getting pretty much what they say I should, and I'll hopefully get around 25/25 when my order comes through.

When my Fios is working, I always get the speed I'm paying for (20/5), and sometimes I get even more down (at the moment it's topping out around 26).


As long as I've had Fios, I've never had any cap problems, and I'm certainly not light on the bandwidth. I wish I'd monitored how much I've been using, but I know I've downloaded many dozens of GBs in a month and never gone over.


The plan I'm hoping to get for the university I'm working for is the Fios 150/35 for $200/month.

Must be from a smaller local provider -- none of the big companies offer fibre.

B(h)ell offers "Fibe", which is their marketing term for VDSL, but not fibre.

Cheers

I read the same thing elsewhere, perhaps DSLReports. I definitely trust your word over Bell's. Bell however, claim in plain English and black and white, that "Fibe" stands for "Fibre Optic"

Sure, perhaps it does. But that does not mean that you get fibre when you sign up for "fibe". They don't say that, and nobody does.

Most "fibe" customers are serviced from little bulgy brown boxes, usually located at the end of a fibre run, within 2km of the end users. Copper pairs are used from the box ("remote") to the customers.

But sometimes the remotes don't even have fibre backhaul, instead using bonded pairs (copper) back to the network.

So they (Bhell) figure, there's fibre somewhere in our network, so let's call the entire service fibe. More honest people prefer to spell it as "fib".

Speaking of Bhell's "fib" service -- this past winter a crew bolted one of those bulgy brown boxes on to the neighbourhood distribution panel (a larger fin-shaped brown box). And this past week another crew actually hooked up power (240V) to it.

But it's still an empty brown box right now. I guess another crew will eventually arrive to populate it with the "remote" electronics for VDSL. There is no fibre anywhere near it.

This stuff is being deployed for "IP TV" service; the internet add-on is secondary (in Bhell's mind). I'm hoping to eventually get a line on the remote with my teksavvy service.

Cheers

Wow, that's more than a little dishonest, but you've clearly nailed the situation, Mark.

Fios, on the other hand, is adamant about "fiber to the home." They clearly hate setting apartment buildings up the way that mine is, and in this case they were held back by the developer or building management company who didn't want them to set up the way they'd like. Fortunately I'm still getting the same result.

I was very impressed at the speed of Verizon's fiber rollout. Initially it seemed like I'd be waiting years to get it at my house, then one day I saw the fleets of Verizon trucks with spools of orange conduit driving around my neighborhood. Within a few weeks, I got the email notification that it was available at my house, and a few weeks later, the guy was digging the trench in my yard to run fiber to my basement.

I'm also quite impressed by the look and feel of the new FiOS DVRs:



The chaptering with thumbnails and guide browsing interfaces look superior to what I have now. I just hope the multi-room stuff works nicely.

So, my FiOS install occurred yesterday. The installer didn't have any of the new DVRs, but I was able to swap the one he gave me at a Verizon retail store free of charge.

The new firmware for the media guide/DVR stuff hasn't rolled out to many markets yet, so the version I've got is a bit of a step back from the Dish Network VIP722. The UI is just a small notch above what I've seen from Comcast cable boxes, and the scheduling / conflict resolution features aren't very robust. The upgraded version shown in the video above looks like it should improve on at least some of these problems.

Losing picture-in-picture is a bummer, and losing the ability to pause / rewind live TV on the additional TVs is also quite a drag. The multi-room functionality works fine, and seeking is faster than I expected -- a tiny bit slower than what I'm used to on the Dish, but still totally usable.

The VOD selection is actually very good. It probably isn't what you get from Comcast, but is way more than what was on Dish. Good selection of network shows, movies, etc. that will be nice to have if we miss a show or two.

The one BIG step up is the FiOS picture quality. They aren't recompressing the feeds (as the satellite operators have to due to limited bandwidth on the satellite feeds) so the PQ is very, very nice. I had read that this was the case, but it's even nicer than I thought it'd be.

In the end, I'm saving $30 a month (about 25% off my old bill), so even if things stay as they as they are, I think this was worth doing. If the upgraded firmware delivers on its promises, I think I'll be even happier with my decision.

Thanks to all who chimed with advice. I'll probably post an update here when the new firmware rolls out.

Man, this aspect of the switch never crossed my mind for some reason. I think it's been so long since I last used satellite that I'd forgotten how much better the picture quality is. Welcome to the world of the uncompressed! Short of OTA, I'm pretty sure Fios has the best quality out there (it might equal OTA).

Less compressed, surely?

I don't know, they've certainly touted "uncompressed" in the past.

Right. Verizon's still getting (mostly) high-bitrate MPEG-2 streams from the content providers, it's just that they're not recompressing it the way the satellite providers need to. I don't know exactly what bitrate FiOS is sending out their HD streams in, but it certainly *looks* uncompressed to my eye. I can't see any artifacts the way I can on Dish/DirecTV signals.

MPEG-2 *is* a compression scheme.
So "less compressed", rather than "uncompressed".