We got FiOS on Saturday

Review Summary: get FiOS.

This past Saturday, Verizon installed FiOS TV and internet in our apartment, replacing the Time Warner cable and internet we had. It rocks, and if you can get it, you should. Here are our speed test results.


The download is more than 2x faster, which is great, but the upload is a full order of magnitude faster. Good lord! This makes a huge difference, let me tell you.

So FiOS internet is great. The included wireless router has a decent management interface, but only supports 802.11g, so I turned off its wireless features and am using our Airport Extreme in bridge mode to get 802.11n.

Where FiOS really impressed me is with TV. The HD picture is noticeably crisper and more defined than it was with Comcast in Seattle or Time Warner here in New York. It was a bit annoying to get the Tivo set up, since it did not list Verizon as a provider for 10002. But there was a workaround mentioned on some of the online forums to use something like 10923, which is somewhere in New Jersey, and worked pretty well.

There is no macroblocking, the picture never breaks up, the sound never drops out, and it just looks amazing.

The user interface for the set top box is actually pretty good to boot. We’re using the Tivo primarily, but I think if we didn’t already have a series 3 Tivo, I might be able to deal with just using Verizon’s DVR interface. It’s pretty snappy and actually modern looking, which is way better than the old and busted Comcast and Time Warner interfaces.

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