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Basic Fios tv questions

Hi...

Got a flier in the mail for one of those "periodic account reviews", and our 2-yr contract is up in Dec.

We've got Fios phone + internet (15/5), which apparently is a pretty rare bundle for people to buy...

The internet speeds are fine for streaming from Netflix, and with Netflix we find that we don't need 150-250 channels of tv...

Given our neighborhood, we still get cable from Comcast but we cut back to the most basicplan they have. Still too expensive in my opinion for what it is, but the sole remaining virtue is that we don't need any set-top boxes for it. No monthly rental fee and nothing to get in the way of the old dvr we use to record the few shows we want to record.

The Verizon rep this morning told me that the Verizon bare-minimum tv package was $12.99/mo. My question is: can we get away without the set-top boxes at that level? I don't want the monthly rental fee and I don't want my dvr to be out of luck. If we can get the basic tv w/o the set top boxes from Verizon, it would be worth getting it all on one bill

Thanks

Mark

Comments

lasagna

Pretty much the only thing you can get without a box are the local channels you generally could get over the air in your area. Anything which is non-local is an encrypted signal and needs a box to decode.

If you're not worried about HD, a digital adapter will run about $3.99 (or they may have just raise that by $1 or $2) per month per TV. I've found that for me, with 4 TV's and wanting HD on all of them, the cost of the service from the Cable company (without boxes) is the same as FiOS (with boxes). The difference however is that you get the on demand features (and premium channels, which you already said you don't care about) on every TV and in my case, some additional channels -- although most of them I don't watch usually.

What helps more however is the ability to then bundled everything from the same provider and get a bigger discount. I've used that discount to offset upgrading on of my STB's to a DVR -- so, basically, I get TV for the same price as the cable company but get a DVR as a bonus for being a bundled customer. YMMV.

mmodrall1

Thank you very much for the response...

I was worried that I wouldn't get anything at all without the boxes...

It's funny - I was talking with the Verizon rep this morning; she said that the basic broadcast channels package was $12.99/mo but that it wasn't included in any bundles at all. To get a bundle you have to start with the tv package with something like 100 channels.

The same tv plan from Comcast is running me $22/mo - and now they want to charge me $2/mo for the little digital converter box to use on our old tv in the basement.

I don't know what the phone + internet price is going to go to when our bundle is up in Dec, but at the current price anyway it's a better deal to have the (internet, phone) bundle and toss Fios basic tv on top outside it and to dump Comcast altogether. Can't say I'd be sorry about that.

Justin46

@mmodrall wrote:
Thank you very much for the response...
I was worried that I wouldn't get anything at all without the boxes...
It's funny - I was talking with the Verizon rep this morning; she said that the basic broadcast channels package was $12.99/mo but that it wasn't included in any bundles at all. To get a bundle you have to start with the tv package with something like 100 channels.
The same tv plan from Comcast is running me $22/mo - and now they want to charge me $2/mo for the little digital converter box to use on our old tv in the basement.
I don't know what the phone + internet price is going to go to when our bundle is up in Dec, but at the current price anyway it's a better deal to have the (internet, phone) bundle and toss Fios basic tv on top outside it and to dump Comcast altogether. Can't say I'd be sorry about that.

Be careful here about getting channels on a TV without an STB. You can only get channels (any channels at all) without an STB if you have a TV with a QAM tuner. Older TVs most definitely won't have QAM tuners, and not all newer ones do. So if you plan to hook up a TV without any STB be absolutely sure that the TV has a QAM tuner.

__________________________________
Justin
FiOS TV, 25/25 Internet, and Digital Voice user
QIP7232, QIP7100-P2, IMG 1.9.1
Keller, TX 76248

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