[nabwong]

Hey peeps,

Finally i jumped on the HD bandwagon. Got my lcd last week and am loving it! Thing is, i only have basic cable from comcast. I've been trying to resist upgrading my plan but i really want ESPN-HD and Discovery-HD. So i've been comparing comcast and fios. Does anyone have any opinion on this?

The Fios package would be $42.99 + $9.99 ( for hd ) + tax.

Comcast has a $39.99 + free HBO (for a few months) + $5 ( HD ) + tax ( but the channel offering seems a lot less )

What about direct TV? I'm leaning toward Fios right now.

 

[Redo]

Quote:

Originally Posted by nabwong /img/forum/go_quote.gif Hey peeps, Finally i jumped on the HD bandwagon. Got my lcd last week and am loving it! Thing is, i only have basic cable from comcast. I've been trying to resist upgrading my plan but i really want ESPN-HD and Discovery-HD. So i've been comparing comcast and fios. Does anyone have any opinion on this? The Fios package would be $42.99 + $9.99 ( for hd ) + tax. Comcast has a $39.99 + free HBO + $5 + tax ( but the channel offerings seem a lot less ) What about direct TV? I'm leaning toward Fios right now.

FIOS if available. I would probably take Comcast second. DirecTV will launch their new satellite with mpeg4 encoded channels only, and have a whole slew of new HD channels very soon. But at the moment, D* is a bit behind Comcast, which I believe is a bit behind FIOS.

 

[BDA_ABAT]

No HD yet here, but we switched from Comcast to Fios nearly a year ago.

The verdict?

We get more channels that we actually watch, get a DVR (didn't have one with Comcast) that can play back from any connected TV, get a much better quality picture, and get internet service (even with the slowest/cheapest option) that is more reliable than Comcast. Oh, and it was $30/month less expensive than what we were paying for Comcast.

In our area, Comcast has regularly irregular outages. We never knew if we would have internet access or if the TV picture would be fuzzy or not. It's been a very different experience with Fios...we've not had a problem in ~ 12 months of service. And, even on it's best day, the signal from Comcast did not look as good as the signal from Fios.

The only minor downside? The network speed is NOT as fast as that from Comcast. However, it's only noticable with large (tens of megabyte) downloads, and even then, it's not orders of magnitude different.

Again, no experience with the HD content... but we're quite happy to be done with Comcast and quite happy with what we're getting with Fios.

Bruce

 

[threEchelon]

Quote:

Originally Posted by BDA_ABAT /img/forum/go_quote.gif The only minor downside? The network speed is NOT as fast as that from Comcast. However, it's only noticable with large (tens of megabyte) downloads, and even then, it's not orders of magnitude different.

This depends on the transfer rates you buy. I have 15Mbits down, which is over twice as much bandwidth as I got from Comcast, which was 6 something Mbits at the time, I believe. Now Comcast's maximum is up to 12Mbits down.


With FiOS, you need to rent a box for each TV, which can push the cost higher than Comcast's price.

 

[BDA_ABAT]

thre... that's why I included the note about "even with the the slowest/cheapest option." that appeared just before the areas you clipped.

Another bonus of Fios: Nice to be able to bump up the downstream rate for only $10 more/month.

BTW: thre... DANG! 15 MBits must FLY!!! Are you doing anything supa-fun with that bandwidth??? Am trying to come up with some reasonable-for-the-wife justification for increasing our network speed.

Bruce