Child Item

Site Totals

61362 Questions Answered 267 Categories

Getting ready to order Fios TV in Brandon, FL

hdfxrs

Currently have Brighthouse cable and want to switch to Fios.

Do I need a set-top box for each TV?

Do I use existing house wiring (typical coaxial TV cable)?

Can I expand the DVR memory? 18 hours of HiDef is not enough.

Can I continue to use my existing Tivo on a secondary TV?

How many remotes come with the multi-room DVR?

Comments

CSimpson

Currently have Brighthouse cable and want to switch to Fios.

- Cool.

Do I need a set-top box for each TV?

- Yes, unless you have something that supports cablecards. But without STBs, you miss out on VOD.

Do I use existing house wiring (typical coaxial TV cable)?

- More than likely. Just depends on your current cabling. Expect to pay extra if additional coaxial runs are required.

Can I expand the DVR memory? 18 hours of HiDef is not enough.

- Not at this time. Rumors are that the latest DVR has an E-SATA port that might be enabled in the future.

Can I continue to use my existing Tivo on a secondary TV?

- Sure, but requires Fios cablecard. My friend has two Tivos with Fios, but he loses out on VOD.

How many remotes come with the multi-room DVR?

- Multiroom DVR requires a single DVR, then either Standard STBs or HD STBs for each additional TV in the house. You get a remote for each STB. My house currently has 1 HD-DVR (Home Media Multiroom), 2 HD STBs, and 2 SD STBs. I can stream recordings to all of my TVs in my house, except for HD content to the SD STBs, but those TVs are not HDTVs, so I don't care.

PJL

@hdfxrs wrote:
...
Can I expand the DVR memory? 18 hours of HiDef is not enough.
...

FYI HD recording time is more like 24 hours, not 18.

hdfxrs

Thanks. I'm not interested in VOD, but hoped to avoid STBs for my 6 additional TVs. Was hoping for a system similar to Dish where the main DVR feeds multiple TVs. It doesn't matter that the signal to the additional TVs is the same as there are only two of us and we can't watch all the TVs at the same time anyway. I have a distribution point that I can use to send the second signal to the additional TVs.

Also, I don't think my Tivo has a slot for a Fios card.

At any rate, the lack of DVR storage space (whether 18 or 24 hours of HD) is probably a deal killer.

CSimpson

I'm not familiar with Dish, but are you saying you only have one box powering 7 TVs by using a splitter? If so, how do you change channels when you are on a remote TV?

I had DirecTV in the past and it required a STB for each TV. Only other way around this is by using CableCards.

BTW, I'm sure that HD-DVR Tivos support CableCards. In fact, there is probably support for two cards so you can record two shows at once. All cable companies are FCC mandated to offer CableCards to their subscribers.

If you have a Tivo, then you don't need to worry about storage space. Just throw a 1TB drive in that thing and have several hundred hours of HD programming.

hdfxrs

I have Dish in my summer home in WNY and split the second signal to three additional TVs. The DVR comes with an infrared remote for the main HiDef TV and a UHF remote for the additional standard TVs. The additional TVs all must watch the same channel or recording.

In Tampa, my Tivo is an older, non-HiDef model with a paid up license. I use it on a standard TV in my exercise room.

I also have a Western Digital hard disk attached to my current cable DVR (via ESAT, I believe) to increase the storage space. I would like to continue to use this on a FIOS DVR as it's a fairly recent investment.

Child Item