FIOS: Any Hope?

[PeteCress]

We're probably the last house for a hundred miles without cable TV.

Just got an offer to add "FIOS TV" to my internet service for five bucks a month.

Truth be told, I have more recorded OTA TV on my server right now that I could watch in my remaining lifetime.

But for five bucks a month.....

My kneejerk was that Verizon has FIOS locked down/encrypted/whatever so that mere mortals cannot tune/record from it - as in SageTV hooked into a couple of Silicon Dust tuners.

Have I got it right?

[panteragstk]

From what I know of FIOS qam is just like anyone else. You may get a lot, you may get nothing but locals. Now lots of people are using FIOS and cablecard with sage and seem very happy. Everything but hbo, cinemax, showtime, etc are copy freely (for now).

[mistergq]

HDHomerun is limited to network channels. FIOS works withe HD PVR. With the Colossus, there is sync issues. You can also record from firewire as well, although I have never set it up or tried it. I have not tried the firewire or cable card. Also, my understanding all channels works on cable card, but truth be told, I would be okay with just regular cable channels on cable card.

If the audio sync issues do not get corrected by November 1, I think I will be going back to HD PVR because it gets annoying on back to back recordings.

As to the internet, once you use FIOS internet, you can't imagine ever using anything else.

[will]

If you can get a cable box with component outputs then I would recommend using an HD-PVR with firewire channel changing (if your box supports it). I have two HD-PVRs setup that way and they are very stable (once I got all the bugs out).

The added benefit with an HD-PVR is the cable companies can't control what I can and cannot record!!