Spotsylvania - Fredericksburg VA Verizon FIOS TV

It is actually available in a few other subdivisions not mentioned as well (e.g., Lees Hill North, Troon, Watford Village).

I know of two people that have already placed their orders...one in Lee's Crossing and one in Watford Village.
Yes, initially the line-up will be the same as NOVA. The questions regarding the Richmond stations was asked at one of the recent Cable Commission meetings. The Verizon rep stated that both the non-HD and HD versions would be added as they came online.

Is there any anticipated timeline for that? No Richmond stations is a deal breaker, unfortunately.

I've been itching to get off the Adelphia/Comcast train to mediocrity for quite some time now.

Yep, they are currently in the process of getting the fiber link connected at the Richmond stations. Once that is done, the transmission process up to Spotsylvania is pretty simple. I don't know of a specific timeline. However, I would bet on sooner rather than later.

As of today, there are over 40 orders for FiOS TV in the Verizon system.

I live in one of the areas of Spotsylvania being serviced by FiOS TV. I put in my order on November 1st actually on the web (before it was annouced Verizon made it available) and got an install date for Nov. 16. I will let you know what channel lineup I receive. I have a Media Center PC and I noticed when I plugged in my zipcode back in September, it had a selection for Verizon/Herndon based on the Spotsylvania zipcode for my station list. The only difference I think will be in the local block of channels. I received my confirmation call today that the install was on for Thursday - so lets see how it goes. Should be quick considering I already have FiOS internet and have RG6 cable for Satellite (I ran those cables myself).

I just got the TV service installed today - having switched from DIRECTV. The picture quality is the same as DIRECTV on SD and HD (I can't tell the difference between FiOS TV and DIRECTV). There is no signal fade or degredation though via FiOS at ANY time. I have watched TV now for about 2-3 hours and not one glitch on the FiOS TV. The spotsylvania channel lineup (at least for now) is the EXACT same as the Northern VA/Herndon one as posted on Verizon's website. However, the local channel entries (QUITE A FEW) are completely blank - no programs and no program guide data. There are a few channels in the 30-45 range which look like a clump may be reserved for Richmond stations - we will see in the future. For now, there are NO LOCAL spotsylvania only channels. All of the over-the-air digital channels from northern virginia and the local plus are all available. The HD channels do NOT come in on regular boxes (they are in the channel lineup and selectable) but any show broadcast regular definition and the local plus digital do (the regular definition is available on the <50 locals anyhow). The on-demand show selection is very impressive and definitely more expansive than that which Adelphia had offered (this was from a year ago when I had cable though...) and of course DirecTV doesn't offer this at all. Another nice feature of the DVR is if you are watching live TV and decide to record a show half way through - it takes and uses the buffered live data and records the ENTIRE show. Hence if you finish watching the show live you will have the full show and not from where you recorded. Others may have this feature as well.. but I just wanted to note the Verizon FiOS TV Media DVR does this.

The installer took about 3 hours (even with all of the cables already run except the main COAX for the cable) and they setup all the boxes and remotes for you (even programming the remote control codes).
Sad to say.. but all the remotes are the 'worse' scientific atlanta remotes. They are ok but definitely the key response is lacking on the remotes as some have mentioned.

I have the media manager option and it works flawlessly just as advertised. I can record on the main TV and fast forward, pause, rewind on remote boxes from recorded DVR material anywhere in my house from the standard boxes. I can also view music and my pictures loaded on my computer remotely from my DVR ONLY - nice to be able to sit at the 'big TV' and view the stuff from my computer there. Supposedly I can do this from the regular boxes, but it doesn't work yet and the manual says this is not available yet. Also is nice to be able to play music files on my nice audio system (better than the one on the computer)!

I can definitely say.. from the first day of use.. I would not be switching back to DIRECTV or anyone else unless I leave the FiOS TV area and am very pleased for the quality of what I am receiving - especially at a lower cost for the same level of service!

Bcrane, I'm curious as to how many TVs you have feeding off the FIOS.

I ask because, with Adelphia, I consistently have problems with complete signal dropouts on the digital tier and I've been told that it's because I just have the cable split too many ways--7 TVs total, three of which have digital boxes, one of which is an HD box, plus an additional line for broadband access. I'm a little skeptical that this is the actual reason for the digital dropout because it has only ever happened on my HD box and even my loss has not always been consistent: I have lost all digital including HD once but other times I have just lost either the HD signal or the HBO tier, or the HBO tier and the digital tier but not the HD tier, but I suppose this is a topic for the other Fredericksburg-area thread.

Anyway, I'm just not very knowledgeable about this particular facet of cable distribution into the home (or how FIOS differs), and I am very curious as to whether I could expect improved service from FIOS in this regard. My other concern about FIOS is that I'd have to get a minimum of six digital boxes to receive any kind of comparable channel selection to Adelphia, since you receive broadcast channels only without a box.

The reason I've never seriously considered DirecTV is precisely because, after the fourth TV, service becomes exceedingly expensive.

In answer to your question, I currently have 3 regular digital boxes and the single media DVR. Verizon installed a 6 way splitter (with 11.5dB loss at each port) of which I am using four terminals for the 4 feeds, 1 terminal for the feed which connects BACK to the Verizon router and feeds the Multimedia over Coax (MoCA) and leaving one free terminal. HOWEVER, I have my upstairs feed (one RG6 cable which runs basement to attic and goes to my 4 bedrooms) into a 4 way splitter with 8dB loss into my Master Bedroom. My max loss is the about 20dB running into my Master Bedroom. I see no reason I could not place a 4-way splitter on every single output giving the possibility of easily feeding 20 boxes. I am not sure after 20dB of splitting I would want to go further. I approximate about a 3dB signal loss though the entire length of RG6 in the house. Given I saw somewhere Verizon had a 55dB dynamic range, this would leave a good 32dB margin. Usually, anything over 30db would result in a crystal clear picture. With digital you can usually get down to a 16dB margin but I've found a 22dB to be much better and include any losses. I think the cable systems loose upto 20dB before they even arrive at your house - therefore if they had the same dynamic range you would be in the 15dB-20dB signal range from the Cable company - which I would guess is why you have so many dropouts. I had the same problem with Adelphia when I was with them - especially the channels higher in frequency. Of course you could see noise on all the analog channels with that type of signal - I got a better signal from my 13ft Radio Shack brand over-the-air antenna - in my attic - in analog (sad isn't it?)! I did use a signal amplifier when I had cable to even successfully distribute the signal to my upstairs TVs since the loss was too great. The cable modem HAD to be on a dedicated output port which further limited how many TV's I could feed. Cable is ok if you keep your TOTAL tv's to 2 and then one to the cable modem or 4 total tv's and no cable modem. (The cable modem needed to use the 4dB port of the 4dB/8dB/8dB 3-way splitter to work decently). I then fed from one of the 8dB ports to my upstairs (which had a further 8dB splitter) but placed a 10dB in-line signal amplifier. This messes up the cable modem capability to upstairs (which I didn't use) but allowed a distribution of signals with better picture. It also didn't help I was within the FCC class B contour of JoyFM broadcast which takes out analog channels 95-99 (adjacent RF frequencies) and was REALLY bad with Adelphia until they moved the channels. My old TV's w/o shielding could never get those channels because of the signal interference. Please note at some other people's houses with Cable they had MUCH better signal than I did - however being in the 'back' of my neighborhood.. my signal was bad!

One other thing you might consider if you have FiOS TV available is if you can get the local broadcast channels in analog (I think there is an option for that) then you would only need the digital boxes on those TV's. The reason I say this is that they have the main digital stations (NBC, ABC, CBS, FOX, WB, CW, WETA and MPT) all in the 800+ channel range in HD as well as the secondary channels in the local plus selection. This does allow you to receive on your REGULAR TV's all the channels you would get via an over-the-air antenna. I will probably aim my over-the-air antenna at Richmond if FiOS doesn't carry those channels since I no longer need it pointed at DC.

I watched both Video on demand and regular TV for about 3 hours last night (in addition to the 3 hours yesterday.) [I actually didn't watch it for that long.. but between putting my children to sleep it was on that long]. Anyhow, no dropouts, no fades and the digital signal on ALL channels is crystal clear. As a matter of fact, the guide is much faster than DIRECTV ever was. Given we had torrential rain yesterday and the boxes were installed during that time, my wife told me the picture was crystal clear even during the storms.

Thanks for the response. Very interesting. It seems like we had the same problem with Adelphia. My house is also in the back of the neighborhood, and all the TV signals fluttered in the 16-18 dB range. The easiest way I found to solve the problem was just to reset the box and let it reboot. Usually that helped. Of course, that also purged the guide data, and it seemed to take a while for the guide to redownload, so it was pretty annoying.

It sounds like FIOS is vastly superior to Adelphia. I also wasn't aware that the rent/lease fee on the boxes was only about half as much as Adelphia. I guess I'll be watching closely for the Richmond stations to go up on FIOS and then place an order.

My neighbor is switching from DishNet to FiOS and I switched from DirecTV to FiOS. I also have Over-The-Air HD antenna's as mentioned.

As to HD picture quality, most of the DirecTV stations which are HD (TNT, UHD, etc) are poorly upconverted signals to begin with (e.g. Knight Rider.. bleh) and look terrible anyhow.. so a comparison on that isn't worth it. As to Discovery HD Theater, I thought DirecTV didn't compress that much anyways and it was very hard to tell the difference. I have a 50" diagonal rear-projection triple LCD Sony TV (the thin type). It has Sony's Digital Reality Creation circuitry which upconverts everything not-HD to near-HD quality with 4x motion interpolation. It displays natively in 720p or 1080i (my choice).

The improvement with FiOS HD isn't really in the clarity of the picture but more in the lack of artifacts at any time. Even with perfect weather, DirecTV didn't send a signal that wouldn't get some minor interference. My Over-The-Air was better quality than DIRECTV and DISHNET were (I used a purely UHF antenna with a UHF gain and very high directivity and very low NF (2.5dB)). The FiOS rivals the OTA picture and beats it with no artifacts and also doesn't have the distinct 'lag'. For those unfamiliar with this, if you watch an OTA broadcast and one from DIRECTV or DISHNET, there is a good 2-3 second lag in the broadcast via satellite. FiOS doesn't have this lag (probably because they get a DIRECT FEED from the broadcast station and send it via Fiber on the ground.... light via fiber goes the same distance as RF energy through the air).. hence no lagging signals. Also, the artifacts are caused by interference the satellite uplink to DIRECTV and DISHNET. Additionally, I would receive periodic interference on both the OTA and Satellite from the Stafford Regional Airport traffic which caused multipath bounces and the distinct 'pixellation' of the signal and periodic sound glitches and resyncs.

None of those problems are there with FiOS and they WERE also present with Adelphia Cable (actually the cable had worse digital quality in dropouts than DIRECTV) - now I have had it almost a week and there has not been one time it has glitched, jumped, lost sync, etc. With Satellite and Cable it would be 2-3 times PER SHOW at night. Yes, that's still 95-99% clarity.. but FiOS is near 100%. Granted, I also am comparing this to the new MPEG4 hardware from DIRECTV which DID have a better picture clarity than the older receivers.. and the same can be said for DISHNETWORK which my neighbor had.

I have extensively tested the DVR and it can function as advertised - i.e. watch one show recorded simultaneously recording two live shows and not glitch on any part. A little bit of a 'slowdown' on the initial 'PLAY" of the recorded show but this is to be expected. I even set it to play a recorded show on another box while playing on the main box AND recording two live shows. This ALSO worked perfectly. The great thing about no glitches, is that the show recordings also contain no glitches - this was never the case with DIRECTV or DISHNET.

From my location near lees parke (I am up pretty high according to the elevation mapping from the FCC) I can actually receive at 98% signal strength (from my attic) all of the Richmond Locals (4/5/7/9 and UPN from Richmond as well as the two PBS stations). I must have a good line-of-site to Richmond - although I've been using my Radio Shack 13' antenna for this. Only problem in attic - I also pick up DC analog locals off a VHS bounce of my attic roof.




I can say that Verizon FiOS DOES NOT downsample any HD signals. I think you already knew that but I can confirm it. So for the Discovery Theater channel (one of the few NOT downsampled by Satellite) it is about the same. For the other channels, it is vastly superior. I took a look at some of those 'subpar' shows (e.g. Knight Rider) and noticed it is ALOT better on FiOS than it was on DirecTV. This is picture quality only.. I know alot of people like David Hasselhoff so any fans of him would like this show.


Unfortunately, you are right about the HD DVR. It is great for the standard definition signals - but it is not as good for HD DVR. It's great in the picture department for HD DVR but it is terrible for the sound.

I hooked up the FiOS directly to my QAM tuner (w/o a cablecard). Here are the results:

All Analog channels are broadcast in both Analog (chanels 1-49) and a digital format in SD as well UNENCRYPTED (Channels 66.xxx/67.xxx). The quality of the analog channels is nearly equal to that of the digital... it is acceptable to use the internal tuners in the TV and get a near perfect picture - something I NEVER got with Cable. Yes this only works for the normal 'off-air' analog channels brought through the Verizon FiOS TV on their listings of 1-49.

All broadcast SD are unencrypted and available including the additional weather now, etc.. channels. UNFORTUNATELY.. all broadcast HD are ENCRYPTED and require a cable card (or else I'd be able to see them on my Tuner). I picked up 500+ digital channels (which took me nearly an hour+ to scan through them). The Music Choice are also unencrypted (big deal).

NO TV GUIDE data is broadcast except on a few channels... my TV picks that up and on only ONE channel was it receiving any guide data. If you had a QAM tuner into a computer with the guide on it.. that would work otherwise you won't have a guide.

I don't have a good way to get my computer near the TV so I can't try the firewire. Maybe I will try my camcorder and I'll let you know if it works.

In case you didn't see it in the news, Verizon FiOS TV which is $39.95 / month for the Premier TV service is raising their rate for new subscribers to $42.99 / month. They are also increasing the movie packages by $1-$2 / month (not announced exactly how much yet).

Hopefully this will mean so new HD channels as well!

unfortunately, no

I noticed a few glitches today and noticed a couple new channels have been added to my lineup. The only one which I use (with little kids) is PBS Kids Sprout (which is now channel 222) on FiOS TV - it was the ONLY channel we watched that DIRECTV had and FiOS TV didn't - not anymore. Also VERSUS and Comcast sports net (for PA area) were added. The deal was signed Dec 4th and Verizon got the channels up in ONE WEEK!

Also, I noticed the directory listing for Richmond, FiOS TV was up and they had the childrens channels up 10 channels (making way for new channels).. so I suspect there will be some channel swapping along with the new price increase.

All good news - hard to bash Verizon for a price increase when at the same time they are increasing the channel offering!

Also noticing in my neighborhood.. I think Comcast(formerly Adelphia) has a major problem. At least on my street, 50% (YES that is HALF of my street) is switching from Adelphia/Comcast to Verizon/FiOS and/or dropping their DIRECTV service. Also notice the news release that in virginia Verizon needs 110 new installer workers (that seems like an aweful lot) if only 10% are going to adopt this. I keep getting asked how I like it and most of my neighbors are complaining it's a 2-week plus wait because of a lack of installers.

As another note, now that I've had it for a month (and have put nearly 100 childrens shows on my DVR plus the hundreds on Demand - which change weekly - I would say I think the service is outstanding and Cable is going to have a run for it's money. I would pay MORE for FiOS because it is now a better product then Cable and Satellite!