Verizon FiOS TV → IMG Bugs and missing features FAQ

No one has pointed that out, but some may argue that the old guide was confusing also. It just said the day and you weren't sure if it was for 1 week ahead or 2. So both suck I guess.

The guide will supposedly be updated within the next 2 months, with Gemstar-TV Guide playing a big part. How big is anyone's guess, but a host of bugs will be fixed and some issues resolved. See »www.zatznotfunny.com/
Mark F.

Am I missing something? I don't see anything in that link that mentions Verizon.

Just my two cents, but I am not going to wait for 2 months or even 2 weeks for any improvement. The developers of this mess should be fired on the spot!
And though this is not the end of the world, we used to simply look at the DVR and see what time it was, not any more. Now you have to see the channel number.

If the developers who came up with the biggest piece of crap software known to man, can't even anticipate the fire-storm that has developed over all of this, can we take any comfort they will fix what they were not even aware was a problem in the first place.....I think not.

You fix this Verizon and I will come back, but when the most basic of funtions like being able to delete a recorded show easily are a challenge to you, I see no future for your ability to make this system user friendly.

Normally I would be the last one to get in the way of a good rant but you actually can change the default front display option in the software.

I've had FIOS TV with the multi-room DVR since it was first available in New England, nearly a year ago, and it's been nothing but trouble. I gave away my two Tivo's to a friend (sadly). I've seen many of the bugs described here, had VZ swap out the box and come around to visit many other times.

I now call the support line every time I have a problem, because a month or two ago, Verizon refunded everything I had ever paid for the DVR, and I call each time to insist that they continue to do so until they fix it.

So, I'm willing to wait a little longer to see if they fix it - since it's free.

When you click on Dave Zatz's site, it displays the current days page. At the bottom of each page there is a "Previous Page" button, go back to Oct. 16- "More on Verizon FIOS TV: The Q4 Update". There you will find explanations of enhanced features, bug fixes, and photos galore- even screenshots with the Verizon logo at the top and the TV Guide logo on the bottom.
Apparently, many people here aren't aware that Verizon also has some big things in the works for the first half of 2008. And, more after that.
I don't know whether the cries for TNT HD and the like have drowned out other things or not, but what people need are links to Zatz Not Funny, Multichannel News, and other sites that would have news and info of interest to the people who post on here. DSL Reports is a good site, but often people miss the links to other sites. Mark F

I found out the bug fix update will come out on December 4th for Texas. I am not sure which bugs will be fixed, but it is great news.

Got the update this AM. Something I noticed on a non-DVR box: it came up with parental controls ON and every channel blocked out. I had to go to Menu and setup a PIN, then turn off parental controls to get TV back.

I do not do have the "media sharing DVR" package (though I do have an HD DVR in the other room) but my non-DVR box shows a DVR entry on the main menu anyway.

On my DVR, I had 23% space used before the upgrade and it still deleted my oldest recording.

New guide is just as slow or slower than the old one.

Search by typing in the title was already annoying in the old guide since it wouldn't wrap from right-to-left or vice-versa, but in this one it is even more annoying since if you overrun to the right it will go down a level in the menu, and if you overrun on the left it will take you back a menu level.

BTW, for they guy saying the developers should be fired on the spot--it's not their fault as much as it is their managers who decided it was time to launch this thing. I have developed my share of consumer electronics in the past and the managers always think stuff is ready long before engineering is comfortable with it. Guess who always wins? The managers think it makes them look good to their bosses to get stuff out by the date the big boss promised (usually without consulting the developers). Also, these kinds of things really need to be developed with some serious focus groups / beta testers...and not your average run-of-the-mill subscriber either. They need to get the digital media addicts like the folks on this board to tell them what sucks before they even announce it.

I'll know more after I play with it, but my ranking of things that must be fixed so far are:
1) anything that causes it to reboot randomly
2) anything that is sucking up large amounts of our disk space or making it look that way
3) speed the thing up!
4) get a better text entry for search
5) fix the favorites to be a circular list, like it WAS
6) allow us to remove stuff we don't want from the guide
7) allow us to remove all of particular types of channels (like all spanish audio channels)

He also provided this direct link (but you have to look it up in his HTML to find it, so here you go).

I just got the new IMG today and found that the HD DVR does not work the way it is described under General Support, Question 6.

Using either the old or the new remote, all I have to do is:

- Turn off the DVR
- Press OK on the remote
- Press Menu on the remote

I then get the DVR configuration screen.

I have Build 03.40, which I presume is the same as everyone else has received.

One thing I've noticed is that if you try to record a show once a week, but that channel shows each new episode 2 or 3 times a week, that is a problem. I don't want multiple recordings of each episode, one time is enough, nor do I want to record a rerun of every episode that I've seen before. Yes, the guide can't know what I've seen and haven't seen, but it should allow me to record every NEW episode, and let me decide if I want to record a particular repeat episode or not. Of course, sometimes I can watch some of the episodes of a show when they are on but not others. So, in that case, I only record the ones that I can't watch when they are on. But, if I choose to record a show weekly, and the show is on multiple times a week, I should be able to choose which episodes are recorded and which are not. Mark F.

I turned on my TV tonight to find that someone had destroyed my planned night of entertainment. Yes, I have been attacked by the new IMG. Some shows didn't record, it appears about half of my available recording space has disappeared and on and on. So I come here to DSLreports and find that this garbage and all it's bugs have been identified since mid-Summer(at least). Why in the hell are Verizon still rolling this shit out? Are they on crack?? I used to manage developers and designers. If any of them had even suggested going live with something so functionally screwed up I would have fired them the day they suggested it.

Given all the money Verizon is spending to install and promote FIOS how can they do this??? I understand that we could argue about GUI preferences and design issues all week but the number of stupid bugs is beyond belief.

Right now Comcast is looking pretty good. Which is sad for Verizon. We have all three, internet, phone and TV from Verizon but in reality I could care less who supplies internet, we mostly use our cell phones these days so the land-line is just about redundant. That leaves TV and they just blew their foot off with that.

What a complete bunch of brain-dead, under-achieving morons! The idiot that runs their development unit should be banned for life from any job having anything to do with technology!

.
.
And MillTek said "Let there be Pinkslips, and they were good"
AMEN Brother, AMEN!

Agreed. Why did they need to continue the update before they had some of the biggest problems fixed? Some are reporting that an update is coming out Dec. 4, which makes rolling out this version now even more ludicrous.

What drove Verizon to do this? Is there a licensing payment issue with the older guide software that is forcing them to get off it before a particular date? That is the only thing that makes sense to me.

OK, An update to my comments above.

I called Verizon this morning. Got a very pleasant guy and once I assured him that my remarks weren't to be taken personally I then unloaded all of the remarks I made in my post above. The poor guy said he'd been listening to this stuff since August. He said that the only thing he could offer was that they were going to push some fixes at the end of this week and then they'd push another release next week.

He had no answer when I asked why not wait until the new release was ready other than to say that it's a series of patches and they have to be applied to something that's already there. Well, no not really. They should apply them to the code in their development lab, make sure it works and then push that out to the customers. This way skips all the customer irritation and the waste of their marketing dollars.

Apparently we'll be able to modify colors (no more red backgrounds!) and font sizes and lots of other goodies. Sounds great but the track record is not exactly inspiring much confidence!

Finally, and this is important, I asked was anyone keeping score of what the customers are saying. They are, so every call they receive counts. So anyone who has posted here should also call in to complain.

This is why I just ordered a Tivo. I had to cancel a lot of series recordings because of this low-grade functionality of the Verizon DVR. It might be a problem with the low-grade guide data they chose to use, but I doubt that is the only problem. My Time Warner DVR never had this problem so I don't know why Verizon couldn't get their act together over 3 years and make a DVR that could record series' correctly.

I found a new issue in N. Texas tonight. If I have all my HD channels set to Fav. and then go to guide and using the original FiOS remote scroll down through the 800's I find that the guide will only go to 825 and then stop even though there are additional channels checked off on the Fav listing. Maybe it is TiVo time and I'll just use the OTA signal to record what are predominately major network shows.

The term "img", exactly where in the FAQ is this explained?

»www22.verizon.com/conten ··· uide.htm

That should be in the FAQ.

And, I've said this before, but the ability to easily search just one channel at a time is important to many of us. Just a large horizontal view of a selected channel in the center, with other channels above and below serving as distractions, isn't as good. I like the vertical way better-
Ch. 999 The Muffin Channel
7:00 Why Only Blueberries?
7:30 Made From Scratch
8:00 Consumer Guide To Electric Mixers- Kitchenaid Review
8:30 Butter vs Margarine
9:00 Buying Non-stick Bakeware
9:30 Muffin Of the Day: Banana Nut
10:00 Special Report- The History Of Pyrex
10:30 Spoons, Spatulas And More
11:00 Morning Movie: "The Muffin Man"
1:00 News: Hot Out Of The Oven
1:30 Baking Tips From The Pillsbury Doughboy
2:00 Picking Berries 101
2:00 Focus On Design: Hot Pads and Oven Mitts
2:30 A Page From Grandma's Cookbook
3:00 Crisco Time
4:00 Choosing The Right Mixing Bowls and Measuring Cups
5:00 Gold Medal Flour Hour
6:00 This is getting long but you get the idea. Mark F.

Mark F, that looks like a "must have" channel, I love it

I wish Verizon's IMG could display channels in that vertical form for easy searching. Mark F.

This would be easy for Verizon to do, all that they need is to roll you back to the old EPG. In the old EPG, when you were in the guide, if you scrolled left and selected the channel and clicked "OK", it would give you the vertical form, exactly as you showed in your "The Muffin Channel" example...

The TV Guide Interactive guide that we had with cable could do that. It's one thing, maybe the only thing, I miss about cable. With TV Guide involved in the IMG debugging/update, due yet this year, who knows, that feature may return. Mark F.

OK, after about of week of this thing, here are my observations:

Pros:
1) Skip forward and back in DVR playback are MUCH faster! YAY!!!! Major kudos to them on that!
2) Looks prettier
3) Can now do some box configuration through the menu that you couldn't in the past.

Cons, in order of annoyance:
1) Getting pixelization on both my HD DVR and SD box. A co-worker reports the same on his. CRITICAL TO FIX THIS--the biggest selling point FiOS TV has is the superior picture...now it is getting hosed up a few times an hour.
2) Just getting the guide up on the screen is fairly slow
3) Having to re-find a finished DVR show to delete it after watching / stopping it. That has already caused me to accidentally delete something I didn't want to delete. Plus, requiring all the maneuvering is simply poor UI design.
4) "Spanish channel" bug - adjusting the guide and favorites is practically useless because I get all the interference from the spanish channels I don't care about. While they are fixing that one, they should give two more options:
(a) remove all spanish channels from guide
(b) move all music channels to a seperate menu option / guide.
5) Give me back my disk space!
6) Lack of wrap-around on lots of things in the guide, particularly the favorites.
7) Lack of a 16x9 version of this screen-hogging monster.

Those appear to be the worst for me. I would also think they should be able to indicate in the guide whether you are subscribed to a listed channel or not.

I vote for Mark F's vertical listing (bring it back!) and also for the Muffin Channel...that sounds like a tasty addition!

Obviously, the DVR's series management needs work, but I'm not quite ready to part with the bucks for a HD Tivo yet.

I fully agree with your observations above. The skip/replay/FF/RW performance is much improved, which turns out to be one of the big pluses with the new guide. The only downside to this is that the program status display comes up everytime you use a skip/replay function, so if you are using it to jump between football plays you have to do quick-combo skip/clear keypresses to avoid missing anything. Also, if you are watching the World Poker Tour you can't avoid knowing how long is left in the heads up session. Oh well.

My wife reiterated to me last evening how much she hates the new guide. I am still toying with an HTPC option....

I'm getting about one of these error messages per day when trying to play a recorded show on a normal channel.

error message says "bad recording" possibly due to an invalid subscription channel.

Any else seeing alot of this since IMG 2.0?

What does the time say next to the recording?