The backstory… We moved into our new (old) home about three weeks ago. And, to be efficient, merely transferred our Cox cable and Internet services. Unfortunately, the migration wasn’t quite as seamless as I had hoped – including blown scheduling by Cox and several days without service at both the old and new locations (without restitution). Additionally, regular readers should be familiar with my ongoing switched digital video pain and Cox’s restrictive CCI Byte implementation… leading to severely crippled TiVos. So no one should be surprised I’d want to give Verizon’s FiOS a try. Given reader encouragement in the comments and an upcoming siding project, we accelerated the plan.
My original goal had been to run both Cox and Verizon services simultaneously, reserving the right to terminate the install at any time, but within 10 minutes of the technician surveying the landscape he started severing legacy coax – which is when I realized there was no turning back. The installer (Matt W.) very patiently and expertly accommodated every request and performed outstanding, detailed work during his 6.5 hour visit. Not only that, he refused every offer of a beverage and a generous tip.
Now I did inform Verizon ahead of time that I’d ordered service, but I’m not sure I received any sort of special treatment. In fact, it could have worked against me…
As to the wiring, instead of having cable television enter the home in two locations and telephone enter in what turned out to be four locations, a new fiber optic line penetrates the perimeter through a newly drilled hole and I’ve ended up with a serviceable homerun from the basement utility closet that feeds telephone, television, and Internet to all three levels. Matt found my suggestion to run cable up the laundry chute amusing. It seemed to me like a clever way to get service to the upstairs, but I guess it’d have been an amateur hack. Whereas he pretty easily found a channel from the attic to the basement that runs parallel to the AC intake ductwork and knocked out that challenge in short order.
We basically abandoned all the existing internal copper and added one new phone jack on each level. (I’ll be clipping maybe half a dozen phone jack biscuits and dead wiring from the baseboards this weekend.) To additionally futureproof the home, there is extra coax and Ethernet running from basement to attic. However I’m quite satisfied with the performance of my 802.11n mesh (two access points) and, given Verizon’s gear, can leverage MoCA if I really feel the need to hardwire something. Related, Verizon’s FiOS modem is also a router – however, I obviously chose to disable its wireless capabilities in favor of daisy chaining our Time Capsule.
On the DVR front, we’ve got two units in play at the moment. A FiOS TV DVR, utilizing their latest Motorola hardware (QIP 7232) and a TiVo Premiere with Verizon-provided CableCARD. We’ll have a third box in the mix once we upgrade the living room television. Whole home DVR capabilities have been a priority for me… With the CCI Byte issue behind us, TiVo’s copying (versus streaming) may be sufficient. Alternately, when IMG 1.9 hits, I may pick up a second FiOS TV DVR. In the interim, I’ll hang onto our decommissioned Series3 and TiVo HD.