 Review by sherman10570 
UPDATED: 209 days ago
member for 9 years, 2763 visits, last login: 1 days ago
 Pleasantville,Westchester,NY
 $100 per month (12 month contract)
 "20/20, solid install, HD quality is very good"
 "No MSG in HD"
 "It's fiber, get it if you can"
| Pre Sales Information:
Install Co-ordination:
Connection reliability:
Tech Support:
Value for money:
(ratings match consensus)
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Price is $40/month for a year, then $45 afterwards. Install went very well, technician was very friendly and helpful. Speeds are 20/5 as advertised.
Their usenet service is amazing - 6-7 megabits compared to Cableivion's 1. I hope they continue to offer this in the long term. No more bittorrent uploads...
- Sherman
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May 10, 2008 Update
Upgraded to 20/20 service for $70/month earlier this year. I love the service, and you can't beat the price per megabit. The only (known) downside - you can't call them to save your life. It took 6 hours of calling over 2 days to get the new tier activated.
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April 12, 2009 Update
I've moved to a different town and picked up "new" service with the triple play. They still seem to be offering 20/20 for $5 more on top of the bundle discount. My service is $100/month (20/20 data, Extreme HD, phone) plus $6 for an extra box, $2.50 for non-published telephone service, and I have a $20 credit for the home media DVR that expires later this year. Total cost right now is ~$123/month, but will obviously hit ~$150 once the credit runs out.
At my new location the technician installed the ONT in my basement instead of outside (nice!). I'm amazed that they crimped their own ethernet cables...who does that anymore? I cut their connectors and put in my own junction boxes.
The phone service is as advertised. Nothing to report there. The data service works flawlessly. My IP is rotated every 3-6 months (DHCP lease time is less than an hour).
The video service is great and the HD quality is very nice. My hdhomerun picks up the local HD channels (using clear QAM) without issue. I'm not as impressed with the Motorola DVR they provided (QIP-6416 P2, running firmware 1.6.2):
Good:
- The guide is quick and responsive (unlike the crap boxes Cablevision uses)
- The picture quality is excellent and sound is passed through correctly to my audio equipment
- The DVR has skip forward/reverse buttons that act exactly like my Windows MCE install
- DVR recordings start and stop on time and will correctly follow any delay from the broadcaster (e.g. a football game runs long)
- Access to DVR recordings from other receivers "works" (see bad points)
- I am using my own router and am successfully using the Actiontec as a bridge (set tops are picking up IPs from my router, on demand works, etc)
Bad:
- Accessing DVR recordings remotely from a regular set top is painfully slow. The quality is the same as watching the show on the DVR itself, but there is a 1-2 second delay when the playback buttons are pressed (Play/Pause/FF/RW/skip forward/skip reverse). It makes the feature useless.
- There is an issue with series that overlap each other. For example, let's say I setup two shows to record 5 minutes before and 5 minutes after their scheduled times. Now, let's say those shows are back-to-back (I tried this with the Daily Show and the Colbert Report). The first recording will end exactly on time (not 5 minutes after) and the second recording is all over the place. Most times the second recording will grab the first 5 minutes of the show (NOT 5 minutes before) then stop. This was tested with no other recordings or live TV being watched.
- The only options for recording before/after shows are 5+ minutes (I prefer my MCE default of 2 minutes)
- Remote DVR operation is flaky. It's probably my fault as I'm running my own router (the test fails on the diagnostic screen), but the problems are strange. For example, I can view the contents of DVR and schedule recordings but deleting things is the flaky part. The web interface will show everything as deleted, but only about 40% of recordings actually get deleted. I have to manually remove the rest with my remote.
- The hard drive is only 160GB (20 hours of HD) and is not upgradeable. Information on the Verizon forums states that USB, Firewire, and eSATA ports cannot be used in the future to expand storage. Thanks Motorola, you fucking bastards!
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