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Verizon's New 'Quantum TV' DVR Records 12 Shows At Once

Dave Zatz directs our attention to the fact that Verizon has finally started shipping the company's new Verizon Media Server (VMS) under the "Quantum TV" brand. As a new embedded video illustrates below, the new IPTV DVR hub offers 6-tuners and 1 terabyte or storage for $22/month over the price of your HD service. Users can utilize two VMS boxes to obtain 12 tuners and 2TB of internal storage for $32/month on top of existing HD service.

Users in our FiOS TV forum note that some users in some markets have been able to use the new DVR system for several weeks now, and have been giving their product impressions in the full thread.

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bop75
join:2013-11-08
0000

bop75

Member

oh

I can't find that much to watch!

dvd536
as Mr. Pink as they come
Premium Member
join:2001-04-27
Phoenix, AZ

dvd536

Premium Member

Re: oh

dont forget you could beat the broadcasters at their own game. like when they make a show 8pm to 9:01. that extra minute makes you lose a tuner in the 9pm slot.

djrobx
Premium Member
join:2000-05-31
Reno, NV

djrobx

Premium Member

Re: oh

You really only need 4 tuners to cover the major networks, they're the only ones playing those games. Cable networks tend to re-run their popular shows multiple times, so conflicts are way less of an issue for those.

I suspect the purpose of "12 tuners" is more for being able to handle lots of live TV streams to a house full of IPTV clients. If this thing is serving live TV to tablets, phones, and laptops in addition to the TVs, it's easy to see how a household might casually use a lot more "tuners", without interruption from recordings.

If it's a full IPTV service like U-verse, then the "tuner" limit is usually more of an arbitrary limit to manage DVR disk IO performance, and network capacity.

Majestik
World Traveler
Premium Member
join:2001-05-11
Tulsa, OK

Majestik to bop75

Premium Member

to bop75
Me neither. Which is why I don't own a tv.
People love their tv shows and willing to pay for it.

cork1958
Cork
Premium Member
join:2000-02-26

cork1958 to bop75

Premium Member

to bop75
"oh
I can't find that much to watch"

I hear that! There's not even 12 decent shows on in a whole week that I'd even consider recording!
rradina
join:2000-08-08
Chesterfield, MO

rradina

Member

Why Does It Need Tuners?

Why does it have tuners? If it's IPTV, I thought that meant it used OTT video streams. If so, couldn't it record as many as the premises bandwidth and device capabilities allow?

dvd536
as Mr. Pink as they come
Premium Member
join:2001-04-27
Phoenix, AZ

dvd536

Premium Member

Re: Why Does It Need Tuners?

in theory it could work that way but you'd get too many dropped frames.
rradina
join:2000-08-08
Chesterfield, MO

rradina

Member

Re: Why Does It Need Tuners?

Can you expand on that? If it starts recording an IP H.264 stream, all it has to do is receive the packets and persist them to some form of permanent storage. Later it can read that stream and deal with decoding it. Why would this be any more or less prone to dropped frames than tuning to a QAM channel with a tuner and storing that stream to a form of permanent storage?

I pay for 4-stream Netflix and four concurrent "Super HD" streams work fine over my 30Mbps service. No buffering, no black pixels or stuttering.
VicHighway
join:2002-11-13
Hopedale, MA

VicHighway to rradina

Member

to rradina
FiOS TV is not IPTV, apart from On Demand. Everything else is transmitted as linear QAM.
rradina
join:2000-08-08
Chesterfield, MO

rradina

Member

Re: Why Does It Need Tuners?

Is the article wrong when it mentions the device is an IPTV DVR hub? Does that just refer to once a show is recorded, it's streamed to other devices using IPTV?

Zifnab966
@verizon.com

Zifnab966

Anon

Re: Why Does It Need Tuners?

It's regular RF to the hub dvrs, then streams the channels as IPTV to the client boxes inside the home

dvd536
as Mr. Pink as they come
Premium Member
join:2001-04-27
Phoenix, AZ

dvd536

Premium Member

no it doesn't

it only does 6.
with that title you make it sound like one box will give you 12 tuners.
and some tuners are reserved for specific functions as ive seen written about in forums.

IPPlanMan
Holy Cable Modem Batman
join:2000-09-20
Washington, DC

IPPlanMan

Member

12 shows?

That's impressive. How about 6 shows for half the price?

gatorkram
Need for Speed
Premium Member
join:2002-07-22
Winterville, NC

gatorkram

Premium Member

Sounds sweet..

If only there were six programs on at once worth recording..

That point aside, it does sound nice.

aaronwt
Premium Member
join:2004-11-07
Woodbridge, VA
Asus RT-AX89

aaronwt

Premium Member

Re: Sounds sweet..

said by gatorkram:

If only there were six programs on at once worth recording..

That point aside, it does sound nice.

Many times a week I have all six tuners recording concurrently on my TiVo Roamio Pro.

firephoto
Truth and reality matters
Premium Member
join:2003-03-18
Brewster, WA

firephoto

Premium Member

Re: Sounds sweet..

said by aaronwt:

said by gatorkram:

If only there were six programs on at once worth recording..

That point aside, it does sound nice.

Many times a week I have all six tuners recording concurrently on my TiVo Roamio Pro.

How did you find the time to type this reply?

On a typical evening, 3 hours of prime time on each major carrier, 4 channels lets say, that's 12 hours per night potential just for 4 channels. Add the cable networks which can give you 3-4 more channels with 2 hours each of new content most weeknights, that can easily be up to 24 hours of television recorded per weekday. Now if we reduce that by 8 hours for commercials skipped (if that 30 year old feature isn't disabled), we're at 16 hours per weekday or 80+ hours a week of television recorded.

My guess is the bean counters at Verizon came up with some quantum numbers that made the bosses smile.
JPL
Premium Member
join:2007-04-04
Downingtown, PA

JPL

Premium Member

Re: Sounds sweet..

One thing to remember with this set-up - the DVR is a media server. It feeds out to satellite boxes. Those satellite boxes require the use of a tuner off of the DVR. So, yes, if you ONLY have the VMS box, then you can record 6 programs at once. But if you have the VMS and a satellite box, and someone is watching live TV on that satellite box, it's using one of the tuners from the VMS. Leaving you the ability to record 5 shows on the VMS. Think of the TiVo Roamio/Mini setup. Same thing.

BTW, I've had mine for 2 weeks now, and the integration between the VMS and the IP (satellite) boxes is pretty darn seamless. The guide s/w is currently pretty rough (found some bugs, and it's a bit sluggish for main guide functionality), but the integration of the media server is very slick... and fast. For example, if I pause live TV on that IP box, it responds instantly.

aaronwt
Premium Member
join:2004-11-07
Woodbridge, VA
Asus RT-AX89

aaronwt to firephoto

Premium Member

to firephoto
said by firephoto:

said by aaronwt:

said by gatorkram:

If only there were six programs on at once worth recording..

That point aside, it does sound nice.

Many times a week I have all six tuners recording concurrently on my TiVo Roamio Pro.

How did you find the time to type this reply?

On a typical evening, 3 hours of prime time on each major carrier, 4 channels lets say, that's 12 hours per night potential just for 4 channels. Add the cable networks which can give you 3-4 more channels with 2 hours each of new content most weeknights, that can easily be up to 24 hours of television recorded per weekday. Now if we reduce that by 8 hours for commercials skipped (if that 30 year old feature isn't disabled), we're at 16 hours per weekday or 80+ hours a week of television recorded.

My guess is the bean counters at Verizon came up with some quantum numbers that made the bosses smile.

Do people actually watch everything the record? I know I don't. I've been time shifting my TV watching since 1984 when I first did it with a VCR. I've never watched everything I recorded.

It's just been so much easier during the last 14 years that I've been using DVRs. I record alot of content because I like to have many choices available when i sit down to watch TV. Since I never know what I'll be in the mood to watch. But I don't even watch half of what I record. For instance I record news programs from a bunch of channels on a daily basis. But I certainly don't watch them all, and I might even go days without watching any of them.
toejam15
join:2013-06-14
San Jose, CA

toejam15 to gatorkram

Member

to gatorkram
Exactly! I often wonder why we even have TV service...
HarryH3
Premium Member
join:2005-02-21

HarryH3

Premium Member

Limited Availability. :-(

Too bad that Verizon has chosen to stop rolling out FIOS, so most of the US will never have a chance to subscribe to this service. We used to have Verizon DSL and phone service. But they had no intention of ever offering more than 3Mbps DSL and kept raising the rates on phone service. Their wire pairs at our house are dead now and a coax cable brings TV, phone and internet (available at up to 107 Mbps!) to us.

Mr Guy
@charter.com

Mr Guy

Anon

Re: Limited Availability. :-(

If Comcast isn't allowed to have more than 30% availability why should FiOS be allowed more?
HarryH3
Premium Member
join:2005-02-21

HarryH3

Premium Member

Re: Limited Availability. :-(

Simple, that rule exists today because of non-compete protectionist rules for cable in most municipalities. They are the only game in town. Don't like their prices? Do without! Don't like their service? Do without! If you have no choices, then those protected providers can do as they please. Screw the customer!

We need to get rid of those and let Verizon, Comcast, WhoEver! offer service everywhere. Competition is good for the customer. Just look at what the lazy incumbents do the day Google announces a new Fiberhood is going to be built out. Suddenly AT&T, Comcast, etc. magically has more bandwidth and better pricing, but ONLY in the same area that The Goog is offering uber-speed and cheap TV. Yeah, nothing fishy there!

BTW, Verizon offers phone service in their entire landline footprint. However, they only offer FIOS in a VERY small subset of that footprint.

NYC33
@rr.com

NYC33

Anon

Blah

I live in New York City and I still don't have access to Fios. These people started wiring the city in 2008 and we are in 2014 and nothing. Don't try to blame my landlord because it's b.s.
enthuz
join:2009-08-08
Hampton, VA

enthuz

Member

Now even more of a reason

I really love my 6 tuner DVR with Cox. Now that FiOS has this, I feel better about going back after my contract ends.

FastiBook
join:2003-01-08
Newtown, PA

FastiBook

Member

I want.

This.

ycool
join:2001-12-04
Miami, FL

ycool

Member

I want one!!

I want one!!! Verizon come to Miami!!!

@ Comcast = Why don't you invest into some decent DVR's ???

my two cents..

Anonymous_
Anonymous
Premium Member
join:2004-06-21
127.0.0.1

1 edit

Anonymous_

Premium Member

dual tuner

a dual tuner is significant enough for average user.. unless you are a hard core couch potato

aaronwt
Premium Member
join:2004-11-07
Woodbridge, VA
Asus RT-AX89

1 edit

aaronwt

Premium Member

Re: dual tuner

said by Anonymous_:

a dual tuner is significant enough for average user.. unless you are a hard core couch potato

I couldn't even get by with two tuners back in the 20th century with VCRs. I had several VCRs recording. And back in the early 2000's I used at least six SD tuners for recording. Although I did have to pick and choose in 2001 when I first started recording HD since I only had two HD tuners in a couple of HTPCs to use for recordings. So I had to watch Sd on shows when I didn't have have enough tuners to record in HD. Until 2004 when the first HD TiVo came out and I was back up to six tuners with two DirecTV HD TiVos and my two HD tuners in HTPCs.

Now I get by with six tuners in a TiVo Roamio Pro with a four tuner Roamio Basic on OTA as a backup. Of course I don't watch everything I record, but when I sit down to watch TV, I want something available that will interest me. Depending on the mood I am the content I watch can vary wildly. So the more choices I have the more likely I will have something available I want to watch. And I certainly have no desire to watch anything live. I stopped watching commercials in the 80's.
tmc8080
join:2004-04-24
Brooklyn, NY

tmc8080

Member

whoop de doo dah..

We can DOWNLOAD more than 12 bittorrent shows at a time too.. and not pay a set-top rental fee to boot.. just the local cost of hardware storage. Last I heard, 4tb hard drives were under $175 (might even find em for $129ish if you look).