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A few weeks ago, I reported that FIOS TV was imminent: I had actually placed the very first order in Middleboro. They told us then that we'd be called after August 10th for installation.

Imagine my surprise when one of our neighbors, who had read about this right here, told me he had an installation scheduled for July 25th. Huh? We were the first order, he calls a day or two later and gets scheduled right away - what gives?

So we called Verizon again and after some confusion were told we could be scheduled for July 26th.

On the 25th, I saw a Verizon truck at my neighbor's house most of the day. "Must be having trouble", Linda opined, "maybe we shouldn't be doing this."

"It will be fine", I said (but I was wondering myself).

In theory, if you already have Verizon Internet and Comcast TV, this should be very quick and simple. They disconnect Comcast at the box outside your house, attach a cable from the FIOS Internet, and then come in the house and attach new boxes to the same cable connection you already have. A little magic with their computer back at the central office, and that's it: you have FIOS TV.

Well, it turned out that my neighbor had problems because they actually somehow had two orders in, and when the extra one was cancelled, Verizon accidentally cancelled his Internet at the same time, leaving him completely dead - no internet, no tv. That's why they were there most of the day. When they got here, it was as simple as it should have been: we had it working in minutes.

The very first thing we noticed was that the picture quality is much better than Comcast. We don't have high definition TV's yet - we're cheap, and we know the prices are still coming down. But our plain old low def TV looks much better with FIOS than it did with Comcast.

Of course the channels have us confused; all our favorites are in different places. But we are getting everything we had before and more, and it costs less money. The "On Demand" isn't working yet; I have to call them this morning to see why, but we are very happy we switched.

The "On Demand" doesn't work because I don't have a Verizon router. When they put in the FIOS Internet, I asked them if I had to use their router. I asked because, being a computer geek, I have a $900.00 professional grade router - I didn't want to use their cheap little $50.00 thing. Well, you can use any router you like for Internet, but for the On Demand and Guide features of FIOS TV, you need their router.

They offered to come right out today, but I'm tied up with too many things, so I scheduled for Tuesday.

(later) So they did come, and popped in their router, and now my guide and on-demand works. The router does need to be near both your internet connection and a cable tv jack - I had that, so my install was quick, but apparently some homes are not wired so conveniently - it still gets done, but it takes longer. Ordinarily, there'd be no new wiring at all: they use what you have.

...

Shortly after we got this, the Interactive Programming Guide changed radically. They added new features such as being able to add bookmarks for On Demand movies you want to see. I use that to pick out several films we might like; Linda then looks them over and we decide what to watch. Another new feature is the ability to see trailers for the films - that can really help your decision. As nice as these features are, the new interface is much slower and more clumsy than what we had with Comcast or originally had here. What they really need is a mouse: arrowing through menus takes too much time.

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