Sept 2020 Fios DVR and Guide Update
Scott804
Enthusiast - Level 2

This week Fios pushed out interface updates for their TV services. After nearly 3 hours in chats, I was finally told that there is no way to roll back updates once loaded and they base new update options based on posts in the forum. Below are my complaints that they will only fix with enough support on here, if you have the same issues, please mark the post. 

1. They removed the chapter function for recorded programs on the dvr (the up arrow that would allow you to move to any 10 min marker in a program).

2. The new Now and Next function causes latency when switching channels. Even after setting it to 0 seconds. 

3. They removed the ability to view a single channel lineup in the tv guide. In the past I would just hit guide a second time to see the next 5-10 shows on a single channel. 

4. Finally, I just find the prettier guide view harder to actually read and process. Not sure if it is the number of channels,  dark screen, or just that it is too busy.  Turning off the background video helped a little, but not much. 

1 Solution
Nilsa_VZ
Community Manager
Community Manager

Please disregard that this topic has been marked as solved. This post was marked as the solution in order to float it to the beginning of this thread for increased visibility.

Dear Verizon Customers,

Thank you for bringing these concerns to our attention. We are listening to you and based on your feedback, we have made SOME additional changes to the new Fios TV Interface with the APR 7.8 update. Here are the interface updates:

  • User Interface Improvements
    • Guide legibility improvements
    • Free To Me filter renamed to Subscribed
    • Episode font size updated to fit more characters
    • 2 ½ hour guide skipping with prev/next buttons
  • Video On Demand updates
  • Fixes/Improvements

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You will see the above mentioned Fios TV interface changes roll out from 12/09 through 1/13.

Additional responses:

Coloring: Here is another way to navigate to channel groups that used to be colored:

The channel neighborhoods are still organized by the genres you're familiar with.  While in the main Guide, press the Guide button again to apply your filters and move over to the Jump To function.  Now you can jump your guide to specific channel neighborhoods.  If you have Fios TV One with a Voice Remote, while in the guide you can also say “Jump to <channel neighborhood>”.

Last Button: The button labeled "Last" on our remotes for 1100 and 4100's can be configured to operate in one of 2 ways. You can either jump back and forth between your last 2 watched programs, or you can have it bring up the "Last Watched Rail" which contains more of your most recently watched content, including VOD and DVR shows.

Access Menu>Settings>System>Television>Last Watched Rail to enable and disable the Last Watched Rail.

If the "Last Watch Rail" disappears, please use this workaround: Reboot the box or boxes on which the issue is seen to check if that fixes the problem. If it still appears bothersome or comes back, please disable the last watched rail.  Access Menu>Settings>System>Television>Last Watched Rail to enable and disable the Last Watched Rail.

We are aware of the Last Watched Rail issue reported in this Community and we will have a fix in place with the next release.

 

Guide Banner: You can disable the Guide Ad banner setting via the following:

Main Menu>>settings>>Notification>Guide Banners->Disable

 

Lagging / Slowness / Sluggishness:

If you are still experiencing lagging, slowness or sluggishness when interacting with the set top box after the latest update (APR 7.8), please elaborate on which specific functionality is exhibiting this behavior (ex. Navigating Menu/Guide/On Demand, channel surfing, DVR etc.)?

Please feel free to provide any additional details which will be useful and assist the development team as they further investigate.

 

As always, we greatly appreciate and value your feedback.

Thank you.



Community Manager
Community Manager II

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1,202 Replies
REK427
Enthusiast - Level 1

So glad to see that it's not only me!

This upgrade is terrible. You can't tell what channel you are on without highlighting the channel #.  When pushing Info, it now takes MORE clicks than before. Who ever heard of adding more button pushes instead of less?!?  Did your engineers actually use the channel guide?  Restore the old channel guide!!!

fioshater123
Enthusiast - Level 1

The new guide is the worst, I am older and I can't even see the channel numbers on the side. All shows are the same color, black. It was better when the movies were a different color. I did not ask for this and I do not want it. I may need to drop cable all together and learn how to stream all my shows. Paying this ridicules bill is bad enough. I'm certainly not going to pay for TV I CAN'T WATCH. AND SHOWS I CAN'T FIND.

Tjk11
Enthusiast - Level 2

What a total disaster!

Longislandviewe
Enthusiast - Level 2

Bring back chapters!!!!  30 second skipping is a joke. Serious lag when inputting channel number. I despise this 'upgrade'. Roll it back!

bristollucy
Contributor - Level 1

Try unplugging the set top box then wait 15 seconds and plug it back it. The guide is still awful but it does move faster.

409425
Enthusiast - Level 1

NEW UPDATE IS HORRIBLE. PERIOD.

123Highlight
Enthusiast - Level 2

THIS IS HORRIBLE!!! I THINK VERIZON WANTS ALL OF ITS LONG TERM CUSTOMERS TO SWITCH TO SOMETHING ELSE! Makes television watching anything but a pleasure. My elderly parents with sight issues are really struggling. THANKS VERIZON - AWFUL Customer satisfaction with this one!

BeBe7272
Enthusiast - Level 1

This new guide is terrible.  The channel numbers are smaller and harder to read, especially for older viewers.   When viewing on the guide I can no longer see my current channel.  Instead I see a still of each channel on the lineup, which is useless. The one feature I like, Free to Me, worked for one day and hasn’t worked since.  Every update Seems to be more about aesthetic and less about true function. The last update changing the ‘Last’ feature creates such a lag that I don’t even use the function anymore.

BrooklynGirl2
Enthusiast - Level 1

I HATE the new guide!! The old guide was fine, why was it changed? The new one is hard to read because of the black on white type, there is no day at the top, movies and tv series used to be different colors, if you hit the info button and then hit the left arrow you can no longer get back to where you were in the guide. It really is a pain. Please restore the old guide.

SaraPackers
Enthusiast - Level 1

Yes, the New Guide is unusable. The latency is awful.  If it isn’t fixed in the next week, I will switch providers. 

Verizon, is anyone home? The new Guide makes TV a miserable experience.

Murrymoose
Enthusiast - Level 1

Dislike immensely. Agree with all comments also miss “tune to channel “ when you want to select a show that starts  soon. Instead you end up recording the show. Cannot read banner. Miss being able to watch  show in upper left corner. Bring back chapter guide.  I do like being able to change to HD channel without having to remember the HD number 

JFW11
Enthusiast - Level 1

I hate the new update. I hate it so badly I am thing about dropping Fios

mister_fixit
Enthusiast - Level 2

verizon doesn't care, they fix things that aren't broken, and don't fix things that are broken, it's their creed.  and they don't care if you switch either.  in their arrogance they don't believe that you will, or even if you do, you'll come back.  

Right1
Enthusiast - Level 1

Please revert the last Guide update - it’s slow and adds no value while taking away plenty of useful features

Teers1
Enthusiast - Level 2

Just wanted to vent at how unbelievably terrible the new guide is for people with poor eyesight. Not to mention, how FiOS even removed previous options to improve the font size.

The small text, and white bold font will just look like a blur to those with poor eyesight. Heck, its even terrible for people with normal eyesight.

I can't believe FiOS goes out of its way to make a highly customizable Closed Caption, yet, the guide has ZERO options to improve its visibility for those with sight impairments. I can only guess there's no interest in making a proper guide for the seeing impaired, since it won't fit into FiOS's ability to add rows of commercials to the guide.

FiOS should implement an alternative guide for those with sight impairments, that can be activated via an option. This other guide should have less rows, to allow a MUCH BIGGER font, that also has a color scheme optimal to help aid those with sight issues.

Rant over. Good night.

Pippi2
Enthusiast - Level 1

The new guide is horrible, too much lag time popping up. Very hard to read, the description comes up at the top of the screen rather than under the program title, setting reminders takes much longer now.  On to DVR - took away chapters?!!! Even switching channels is a chore, doesn't come up on the set top box, if you punch the number in on the remote, it doesn't pick up all the numbers so it changes to the wrong channel, it's too SLOW. New technology is not always better!  Please FIX, this has been one of the worst updates over the last 10 years. It's so bad I have actually considered cancelling service . . . . 

Erambo
Enthusiast - Level 2

Hopefully besides all of us saying the new update sucks there are more calling in complaining and they roll it back. I know some things that are new take some time to get used to but this “update” I will never get used to. Just overall from the guide, dvr functions, changing channels, the whole thing is just a terrible design and I still can’t believe this was supposedly tested and approved. I think the designer of it must be related to someone at the top because I cannot figure out who possibly would like this and think it’s better over the old one.

dflerch1
Enthusiast - Level 1

The worst thing is they dont show what channel it is next to the number. It just  says TV. Honestly the whole thing is horrible and if they dont fix it I am switching to Xfinity.

Bluespeyer
Enthusiast - Level 2

There are now 59 pages of complaints (with more to come I'm sure) regarding the new guide and its abundance of poor, user-unfriendly, and completely unnecessary changes. Hello Verizon, are you listening? You'd regain respect – not to mention prevent a mass exodus of subscribers – by simply admitting the mistake and rolling back the update and returning the guide to its former glorious state.  Will you come through? The ball is in your court...

EEE4
Enthusiast - Level 1

This new guide is terrible, and the hundreds of complaints need to addressed immediately.

ByteCrawler1
Enthusiast - Level 2

So Verizon is now taking to DM's to quell people's worries. I got two yesterday and another one today. The one today ticked me off so I'm going to share what their current line of thinking is with everyone here that is suffering:

Verizon: We apologize for any inconvenience this update may have caused. Our release products go through testing sessions with customers just like you before the products are launched. The feedback you have provided has been shared with the team for further analysis.

I highly doubt that. I've never heard of Verizon allowing anyone outside of the company to beta test their products. Just admit your QA team messed this one up big time, don't try and deflect with the "Our release products go through testing sessions with customers just like you." Maybe on the test workstation but not on an out-in-the-wild 7 year old STB.

Don't dig a deeper hole. I love this service I was just saying this summer how solid it's been since I've had it since 2014, but you guys REALLY messed this one up. You broke something that was absolutely fine and I'm sure we're weeks out from a fix before you guys finally decide that we need to upgrade our boxes because it cannot handle the memory load of caching all the extra images you've now added into the guide. Which has somehow also affected the IR receiver, probably because the box is under

such strain its trying to divert cycles in time for the IR. I know you won't roll back, that's unrealistic. But I would start thinking about offering some of your customers free upgrades to Fios One to at least get more powerful boxes to cope until your dev team fixes this disaster.

Why in the world did you strip features out? Can't skip ahead by days on the guide, no more doing chapter skips on recordings, an info bar that almost takes up 50% of the vertical image of the screen. Oh and btw my guide isn't translucent over the channel feed, it completely blocks it. Can't see jack.

What in the world were you guys thinking??