Latest Headlines on OCRegister.com
[x] Close
The Gadgetress ~ TV, mobile and Internet: Covering technology's monthly bill

Archive for the 'FiOS' Tag

« Previous Entries
Next Entries »

New soccer channel debuts on Dish, DirecTV and FiOS

March 1st, 2010, 11:12 am by

Noted: If you love soccer, a new channel is coming your way. Fox Soccer Plus debuts today on several TV services. But it may not come cheap. See below for details.

The new channel is part of Fox Soccer channel and replaces the Setanta Sports, which called it quits in the United States yesterday, Feb. 28. The TV network continues to broadcast overseas. Here in the states, Setanta gave up its programming rights to several soccer and rugby events.

The new Fox channel features at least 600 exclusive matches, including the Carling Cup, England’s FA Cup and the Coco-Cola Championship. It will also include some rugby matches.

If you’re a fan, the services below are offering the channel or will soon:

Dish Network: Channel 406, available for $14.99 a month. Details

DirecTV: Fox Soccer Plus replaces Setanta Sports for existing customers at no extra cost. It’s $14.99 per month.  Details

Verizon FiOS: Automatically switches Setanta Sports customers to new channel, airing on 1009. Also $14.99 per month. Details

Time Warner Cable: Coming soon, according to a USA Today story.

Recent sports TV news:

Posted in: Video & TV • • • • • • • • • • • | 2 Comments »

2 Verizon phones can now turn on the TV

February 18th, 2010, 10:06 pm by

Noted: Verizon Wireless said today it has switched on a feature that turns certain phones into TV remotes.

What you need: Verizon-serviced Motorola Droid or HTC Imagio phone and Verizon FiOS TV service. Using the new Mobile Remote function, the phones can control the FiOS set-top box. All the same functions will be available, including changing channels, pause and rewind and managing parental controls.

The new remote-control feature also allows users to transfer a photo on the phone to TV, or even beam a whole slideshow to the big screen.

And, of course, the phones still are phones. If you get a phone call, the phone mutes the TV.

If you’ve got a compatible phone — and Verizon said that more phones will be added in the future — you set up the “Mobile Remote” on the phone via an app, pair the phone with your home’s Wi-Fi network and then finish up using the Mobile Remote widget on the TV. More details are at Verizon’s site HERE, which includes a video overview.

Recent Verizon FiOS news:

Posted in: Cell phones • Video & TV • • • • • • • • | Comments Off

National Geographic Wild starts in March, replaces Fox Reality

February 15th, 2010, 10:59 am by

Corrected 2/16: Fox Reality is being replaced by National Geographic Wild, not West. My bad. Thanks reader ‘m’ for pointing this out. Text below is corrected.

If you haven’t spent much time on the Fox Reality channel, you’ll be glad to know it’s being booted next month in favor of the National Geographic Wild Channel.

The Fox channel shuts down on March 31, as noted last October, in favor of another version of reality. Why National Geographic? The channel is 50 percent owned by Fox Cable Network.

Time Warner Cable, which notified customers today on its alerts page, switches to “Nat Geo Wild” on March 29. It’s the same channel — 129 — and same plan level as Fox Reality.

Other TV providers have not announced the switch yet but here are the existing channel numbers for their Fox Reality channel:

  • Time Warner, 129
  • Cox Communications, 363
  • Dish Network, 190
  • Verizon FiOS, 197
  • AT&T U-verse, 130
  • DirecTV, 250

For more on TV services, see the following links:

* Time Warner Cable
* Cox Cable
* Verizon FiOS
* AT&T U-verse		 * DirecTV
* Dish Network
* Web TV
* All TV

Posted in: Video & TV • • • • • • • • • | 22 Comments »

Verizon FiOS gets high-def MSNBC TV

February 11th, 2010, 10:38 am by

Verizon FiOS HD ChannelsNoted: Verizon said today that MSNBC HD is now available on channel 603 for all of its TV customers nationwide.  By its count, FiOS now has 138 HD channels (I’m off by one on my FiOS HD channel count page).

MSNBC HD has been around since June 2009 and is already available on most paid-TV services, including Time Warner Cable and Dish Network.

In Orange County, Verizon offers FiOS TV service in certain parts of cities: Brea, Cypress, Fountain Valley, Garden Grove, Huntington Beach, La Habra, La Palma, Los Alamitos, Seal Beach, Stanton and Westminster. When I checked with the company about its O.C. roll out in the past month, Verizon said it continues to pursue potential customers in existing neighborhoods rather than building the service out to new residents.

Recent HD channel news:

Posted in: Video & TV • • • • • | 3 Comments »

How to get Google’s new 1 Gbps Internet service to launch in your city

February 10th, 2010, 11:37 am by
YouTube Preview ImageNominate your city for Google’s 1 Gbps Internet service

That Google, always experimenting with cool technologies from the money it makes off investors and its core search-engine service. Today, the company said it would soon begin testing super-fast Internet service of up to 1 gigabits per second.

The 1 Gbps speed is up to 100 times faster than what many consumers get. One gigabit is 1,024 megabits, so compare it with your own service. Most cable and DSL users get about 3 megabits per second for about $20 to $30 a month.

Google plans to build fiber connections right to a customer’s home, which is the same technology Verizon FiOS uses to offer customers Internet download speeds of 50 Mbps and upload speeds of 35 Mbps.

This is no small investment because it requires city permits and digging up the streets to lay fiber-optic cables and all the way up to a customer’s house. But Google has the money, at least to experiment. It said it plans to offer the service “at a competitive price” to at least 50,000 people. Possibly 500,000. Interestingly, in the Google video on right, the company says it plans to share the fiber with other companies who want to also offer fast Internet to residents.

googleinternetAnd Google is asking the public to tell it where to start. It could even be here in Orange County, if you can get your city to make some inquiries.

“As a first step, today we’re putting out a request for information (RFI) to help identify interested communities. We welcome responses from local government, as well as members of the public. ”

Google is asking requests be made by March 26 and offers this page for as a starting point. City and community officials need to answer some questions, but any one can nominate their city on this page.

A faster Internet pipe has more benefits then streaming high-definition videos from the web smoothly. It allows companies, like Verizon, to offer TV service and broadcast HD channels without the need to compress them. It can mean high-definition video calls. Or the ability to back up your computer’s hard drive online within seconds.

Google apparently has been buying unused fiber for years although analysts had suspected the purchases was to connect Google’s own data centers, according to a CBC News report.

Good reading about Google’s gigabit efforts online:


Posted in: Internet • • • • • | 17 Comments »

Verizon adds paperless coupons for phone, FiOS TV users

February 3rd, 2010, 5:04 pm by

Cellfire coupons on a mobile phoneNoted: Coupons are a pain to remember to use but they do tend to save some money. Today, Verizon teamed up with Cellfire to make using coupons easier for customers with wireless or FiOS TV service. Those customers can sign up at vzspendsmart.com.

Of course, anyone can sign up for the same deals at Cellfire.com. There are two options for redeeming coupons: Pick out deals online and add them to your grocery store loyalty/club card. Or keep the whole process digital and just show the clerk the image on your phone. Unfortunately, the latter isn’t available for most offers here in Orange County. Participants seem to be only grocery stores and Sears.

Verizon doesn’t say whether its customers will get any extra special deals. And it looks like the answer is no. More on the FiOS TV widget HERE.

Fry's coupons from CellfireScanning the site, I noticed Fry’s had coupons! I haven’t been to the electronics store in a long time and didn’t realize it even offered coupons.

The only deal? Just $0.50 off Progresso Soup. Soup? Then I realized, this isn’t Fry’s Electronics. Rather, it was some grocery store named Fry’s Food with a very, very similar logo:

frysvfrys

>>This just in from reader Mike in Yorba Linda (updated 5:41 p.m.): Fry’s Electronics was started by the sons of the Fry’s Grocery store founder, using some of daddy’s money. Hence the similarity. I often go to Arizona, where Fry’s Grocery Stores are common. The signage is nearly identical. As a tech geek, I was somewhat disappointed the first time I went in one. See the link for more info. (Thanks Mike for doing the reporting I didn’t feel like doing.)

Want some real deals? Check out the Register’s Deals blog at ocregister.com/ocdeals. Recent finds:

Posted in: Cell phones • • • • • • • • • • | Comments Off

48% of people served by Verizon can order FiOS but most don’t

January 26th, 2010, 1:04 pm by

Verizon's FiOS TVThe hottest new TV service to invade North America continued to grow during fourth quarter 2009 but at a much slower rate then ever before. One reason? The price. According to the company earnings report today, the average FiOS TV subscriber pays $140 a month.

By the end of 2009, Verizon said its FiOS service had 3.4 million Internet customers and 2.9 million TV customers.

While still a pidly amount compared to cable TV’s 63 million subscribers, Verizon definitely has made the cable companies cringe. Reports of cable companies suddenly cutting cheaper deals with existing customers aren’t uncommon.

Some of that is bound to be happening here in Orange County, where FiOS has spread ever so slowly in Brea, Cypress, Fountain Valley, Garden Grove, Huntington Beach, La Habra, La Palma, Los Alamitos, Seal Beach, Stanton and Westminster. UPDATED, 5:06 p.m.: The company told me today that these are still the only cities in O.C. where FiOS is being offered and, unfortunately, it’s not offered to every resident there. You’ll need to check with Verizon for your home address. The good news for those cities is that Verizon is concentrating on existing neighborhoods where it has already built its fiber-optic service. For the latest, check the Gadgetress FiOS page HERE.

Competition from existing TV services is probably what is causing Verizon FiOS’s growth to peter off. During the fourth quarter, which ended Dec. 31, Verizon added the least number of new subscribers in three years. It added an equal number of Internet and TV customers — 153,000 for each service. See the charts below to compare:
2007 1Q 2Q 3Q 4Q
New FiOS TV subscribers 141,000 167,000 202,000 226,000
Total FiOS TV subscribers 348,000 515000 717,000 1 million
2008 1Q 2Q 3Q Q4
New FiOS TV subscribers 263,000 176,000 233,000 226,000
Total FiOS TV subscribers 1.2 million 1.4 million 1.6 million 1.9 million
2009 1Q 2Q 3Q 4Q
New FiOS TV subscribers 299,000 300,000 191,000 153,000
Total FiOS TV subscribers 2.2 million 2.5 million 2.7 million 2.9 million

Price is one reason why consumers may balk at Verizon FiOS. While it has more HD channels and faster Internet service then anyone else out there, it costs more. See an earlier story: “Is Time Warner really cheaper than Verizon FiOS?”

Verizon reports that it is making more money each month off each FiOS customer — approximately $140 per user. Overall, this helped boost Verizon’s Internet and video revenues to $1.7 billion during the quarter, up 25.5 percent from the same time last year.
Read the rest of this entry »

Posted in: Video & TV • • • • • • • | 7 Comments »

Verizon FiOS Internet upload speed hits 35 Mbps!

January 18th, 2010, 4:39 pm by

Verizon's FiOS TVVerizon just announced today faster Internet speeds for FiOS customers of up to 35 megabits per second upload. That’s faster than any Orange County Internet provider’s download speed.

Faster upload speeds means spending less time uploading photos to Facebook, sending giant spreadsheets and other files to coworkers online or regularly backing up computer files to the great big cloud. According to Verizon, the faster 35 mbps speed means uploading a 20-minute HD video in three to five minutes instead of the half hour it takes with a cable Internet connection.

In Orange County, cable companies upload speeds are a measly 1 to 2 mbps.

But most of Orange County can’t order FiOS. The fiber-optic service is a huge investment for Verizon, which needs city permission to lay cables in the neighborhood. The service has only reached residents in parts of Brea, Cypress, Fountain Valley, Garden Grove, Huntington Beach, La Habra, La Palma, Los Alamitos, Seal Beach Stanton, Westminster and certain unincorporated areas.

Those of us who can’t order Verizon FiOS can, at least, take heart that we won’t be subject to the service’s new early termination fees.

Separately, Verizon confirmed that customers who drop out before their two-year contract ends could be forced to cough up an extra $360. Previously, the fee was $179.  The higher early-termination fee does drop by $15 every month the customer keeps the service, which means by month 23, exiting customers will be charged $15.

The new Internet upload speeds of 25 Mbps up and down, and 35 mbps up and down, upgrade existing plans. Here’s the low down of FiOS TV/Internet bundles:

FiOS plans Price
Ultimate: TV service with 90+ HD channels, Internet speed of 35 mbps up/down, phone $139.99
Extreme: TV service with 65 HD channels, Internet speeds of 25 mbps up/down, phone $124.99
Prime: TV service with 40 HD channels, Internet speed of 15 mbps down, 5 up, phone $109.99

More details on the new bundles HERE at Verizon’s site.

Notable special: Verizon is offering a major FiOS discount to new customers — $20 discount each month for first 12 months for Prime plan, $10 discount for either the Extreme or Ultimate plan.

More on Verizon FiOS:

Posted in: Internet • Video & TV • • • • • • • • • • • | 20 Comments »

« Previous Entries
Next Entries »
SEO Powered by Platinum SEO from Techblissonline