2 hours on the phone with Verizon, and my TV still looks like this- (long + pics)

[Filliam H. Muffman]

ztirffritz wrote:
When was the last time that the landline phones went down for more than a few minutes?

My AT&T landline (also DSL) was up and down for about 12 hours after the first big rain about three weeks ago. I picked up my phone and got nothing but static for about half an hour. It briefly came back and I called it in (it really makes the point when the repair tech can't understand you because of the line noise). I got an automatic call back the next morning saying they fixed it but never got an explanation why it happened.

My Scumcast cable was fine the whole time.

[Wailer]

The pictures of your TV remind me of when I was a kid and tried to get a glimpse of the adult channels by flipping back and forth the 2 adjacent channels!

So overall, how do you like FIOS for TV? I've read reviews, but I still haven't seen or talked anyone who has it. It's got to be better than digital cable but how does it compare to satellite HD?

[mikebw]

Overall it is great. The internet speeds are really nice, and the TV picture (except for this) is superb. Of course there will be some compression artifacts that OTA HD won't have, but there is so much more content on FiOS.

The only thing I was disappointed with was the quality of the non-HD on-demand movies. It looks worse than VHS, and this is on my CRT-HDTV, so it's not even because of the non-native resolution scaling issues present on LCD and Plasmas. I refuse to watch any of these non-HD movies now.
The actual HD movies are great though.

I've never had satellite, but a family member does. I think my picture is better, but it could be because they have a 50" LCD rear-projection TV and the artifacts are physically larger and hence more noticeable than on my 27" TV. I am satisfied that FiOS is better than Comcast (cable) TV.

[RAMd®d]

You're watching pron without paying for the premium channel.

I've got to start shopping for a couple of converters for my CRT TVs.

And ultimately, for a couple of HDTVs.

[Wailer]

Thanks for the review mikebw. I'm glad the service is otherwise good.

I too can't stand watching SD on an HDTV.

I think most HD tvs don't display SD very well because that requires a lot of scaling and scaler quality varies. I know Vizio is very poor at SD and panasonic and pioneer are supposed to be the best at scaling 480i.

I have DishHD and it seems they tend to compress some channels more than others. PBS SD via satellite looks awful whereas PBS over-the-air digital looks "great". It's still SD, but it's watchable because it has no compression.

Now that more VOD is in 1080p, I'm expecting the SD and some seldom watched HD to get worse.