Upgrading Verizon To FiOS TV Quantum

As Verizon declares its FiOS Quantum TV rollout complete, fellow Northern Virginian Ananth Sarathy shares his initial experience with the new whole-home DVR. He’s also kindly agreed to take questions in the comments — perhaps he’ll even be able to explain Verizon’s obtuse pricing.

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I’ve had the new Quantum DVR for about a week now. The interface is the familiar FiOS interface that we’re used to, for better or worse. It doesn’t seem to have yet received the recent UI upgrade and is missing a few elements, such as the autotune to HD feature. The boxes do use the same FiOS remotes as before, so I’ve stuck with my existing ones, and didn’t need to program them, which is nice. But I kind of wish they had upgraded to a remote that could control AV system volume as well.

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Verizon FiOS 6-Tuner Quantum TV DVR & Extenders Arrive!

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First unveiled at CES 2013, the Verizon Media Server (VMS) has finally started shipping under “Quantum TV” via a “phased roll-out” in select markets . The IPTV DVR hub maintains the original 6-tuners and 1 terabyte or storage as originally pitched. Yet, by bundling two units for a reasonable $32/mo, the networked solution seamlessly expands to 12 tuners housing 2 terabytes of recording storage. Unfortunately, unlike existing FiOS DVRs the new VMS doesn’t currently support additional USB or eSATA storage. Each VMS supports up to five extenders (think TiVo Mini or DISH Joey), running $10 a pop. While the product line doesn’t currently feature Xbox/Roku app clients or remote placeshifting, à la DISH Hopper or TiVo Roamio, we know Verizon has been evaluating this sort of functionality via a router sidecar … and Verizon’s hardware partner Arriola has licensed Slingbox technology.

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