Sucky Verizon contract expires soon, will have to pay $126/mo for FiOS Internet and a few TV channels. Some deals on the Cox website look attractive, but of course they don't factor in all the extra fees and taxes, so I have no idea what I'd have to actually pay each month. I'd welcome input from fellow Fairfax Undergrounders who have dealt with Cox. Thanks!

You must switch to Cox after calling them and getting them to offer the best price to lure you into switching. Then in a few months, Verizon will be sending you daily junk mail begging you to switch back, at half what you're paying now. It's a stupid game, but that's how these two evil corporations work. The ONLY way to get the best deal is to become an ex-customer.

Thanks, Buck, appreciate it. Evil corporations indeed. In France they pay $35 a month for their Internet.

Here is a related thread that may provide useful info:
Cox Contour vs. Verizon FIOS
http://www.fairfaxunderground.com/forum/read/2/2130388/2131196.html

I still haven't switched to FIOS.

If you know, please answer below:

Questions: With FIOS can you set up to record a show from a set top box and
TV that are remote from the DVR? Or can you only schedule a
recording from one location (i.e., in the room where DVR is)?

Thanks for any info you can provide.

--------------------------
It's nice to be important, but it's more important to be nice. - John Cassis on manners

Ignoring juvenile attacks and remarks on the internet for over two decades.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 04/03/2016 10:41PM by Dog Walker1.

Dog Walker1 Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> If you know, please answer below:
>
> Questions: can you set up to record
> a show from a set top box and
> TV that are remote from the DVR? Or can you
> only schedule a
> recording from one location (i.e., in the room
> where DVR is)?

With Contour you can. I was watching something downstairs the other night and had to run out for something, just hit "record" (and confirmed) and away I went. When I came back, it was waiting for me. Just like you'd want it to work (for once--if you read that other thread, you'll see I'm not a huge fan of Contour).

Dog Walker1 Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Here is a related thread that may provide useful
> info:
> Cox Contour vs. Verizon FIOS
>
> http://www.fairfaxunderground.com/forum/read/2/213
> 0388/2131196.html
>
> I still haven't switched to FIOS.
>
> If you know, please answer below:
>
> Questions: With FIOS can you set up
> to record a show from a set top box and
> TV that are remote from the DVR? Or can you
> only schedule a
> recording from one location (i.e., in the room
> where DVR is)?
>
> Thanks for any info you can provide.
>
> --------------------------
> It's nice to be important, but it's more important
> to be nice. - John Cassis on manners
>
> Ignoring juvenile attacks and remarks on the
> internet for over two decades.


Yes, you can.

Search for FIOS multi-room DVR and you'll find a bunch of stuff.

Works pretty well. No real complaints with that. Basically what you have is one (or more) STB that acts as a server and the other STBs act as terminals to it for the DVR functions.

You also do it through a phone or other device.

Overall I'd say that I like Verizon better than I do Cox. They both have their issues and both are rip offs. Like the other guy said if you want good pricing you'll have to switch back and forth with promotions.

It takes some money to switch as you will have some "leftover charges" one bill to the other.

The biggest thing that pisses me off is that none of these suckers will give you a honest answer with all charges, fees, taxes on exactly what your bill will be. They ran Verizon Fios in front of my house. I asked how much exactly.. They could not tell me , I said keep that crap I don't want or need it even after they offered me a 500 dollar gift card of some sort. Piss on any company that cant give you a straight answer with a price.

Thanks to Greybeard and x7hTG for the kind and informative replies.

Have to use Cox at work in Fairfax City. It seems to have throttled speeds on random days of the week. Our IT will check if people are going crazy streaming and it always comes back as just Cox. It also goes down about once every other month requiring a technician to come out.

I usually go home to work on Fios with no problems.

Cox and Fios both require set top boxes which they both charge additional monthly fees for...fees depending on box functionality (basic, DVR, etc.). So any bundled price you see advertised doesn't include the equipment fees nor the taxes.

On Cox with basic TV (local channels plus basic cable channels like AMC, FX, Fox News, MSNBC, etc.) you could easily pay $160/ month.

In comparison you could just go with Internet and get something like Sony Playstation Vue (runs on Amazon TV and firesticks, Roku as well as PlayStation) for $29/month and get all of those channels for up to 4 TV's. Basically less than $100 / month for what you are paying $160/month on Cox and on Fios.

I've used both over the last couple years. My thoughts:

1) Fios is better for raw speed. Their service can be absolutely horrible though when something goes wrong. It took 14 service calls before a tech finally figured out the Verizon provided router was bonking out.

2) Cox is better for customer service. Generally, I've never had a bad experience.

Pricing wise, they're comparable.

Just got my new Contour boxes and they are SICK. Super fast response and super slick UI. Remotes are super bad ass too. Love it.

Buck Weat Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> You must switch to Cox after calling them and
> getting them to offer the best price to lure you
> into switching. Then in a few months, Verizon
> will be sending you daily junk mail begging you to
> switch back, at half what you're paying now. It's
> a stupid game, but that's how these two evil
> corporations work. The ONLY way to get the best
> deal is to become an ex-customer.

Ive been playing this game between DirecTV and DISH for a few years now. Once the price gets to what I think is too much, I cancel and switch to the other one. Then whoever got punted comes crawling back with a better deal. Right now Im with DirecTV 250 channels for $45/month. I have been doing this for several years and I can't believe they haven't caught on. I just keep both dishes on my deck and the guy comes out and switches to theirs! It's hilarious!

Apparently Verizon sucks less on a lot if issues even though they sold out to Gov ease of access with people's info. during the Bush Admin.
Under Obama .. it was said the gov. intrusion was just normal. "you shouldn't expect privacy talking on your cell phone."
Nice and the kid contractor Snowdon blew this story up.

Besides all that .. Verizon recentlr offered 69.99 a mo. for triple play .., Cox is well over 100.00 when you add it all up.

NEVER sign up with a "Verizon Rep." who goes door to door -- these people are on commission per sale -- Verizon gets the base price per sign up and these low lifes collect a nice monthly fee from the over priced quote ..
Some twit tried to sell us Verizon service -- i-net, phone and TV fpr over 200.00 per month.

Thanks, great info from you all. We're nearly Luddites in our house. We want to watch news, movies, some sports, and do email and watch Netflix online occasionally. No gaming, not even any DVR-ing. I think a lot of these services offer more bells and whistles than needed for our purposes. I wonder if DISH would better meet our needs....

Check out the basic package from COX.

No serious problems with Cox. Been with them for 20 years(Media General before Cox).

NOW, the price for Cox gets me irate. Every few months Cox increases their fees. I currently have Basic Plus(Basic + upper channels), 2nd tier on their internet service, 3 HD boxes(only paying for two for the first year then beginning the second year I pay for three), no phone, and no premium channels. I'm paying $154 a month. I bet in a few months I will be paying more. This is the only annoying thing about Cox other than them requiring a box now.

Breaking down the fees.......can't remember what every little bit costs but I do know the HD boxes are $2.99 a month.

verizon so long as you don't need support. cox compresses their hd and the picture looks like shit.

helikescox Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> verizon so long as you don't need support.


+1 THAT'S THE DAMN TRUTH!

Dish is how we do it

In theory, Dish is going to *feel* slower for things like browsing, because latency is greater (or at least is *probably* greater). That is, because the time for the signal to go from your dish to the satellite and back down to the ground is (relatively) significant.

OTOH, Dish survives and has its fans, so it can't be that horribly noticeable. And no ISP has a spotless record.

It would be fun to get all available options in the same house and switch back and forth, see which "feels" best.

Had Fios, then Cox HD, now Fios again. Hated Cox...no 30 second skip on DVR...no option for fewer channels...slow internet.

Grey,

With Dish or other satellite TV/internet providers, do the TV signals/internet speed (i.e., bandwidth) degrade substantially when it rains?

In 2005, my wife and I rented a vacation cabin with satellite TV in WV. When it rained, the signals for all or most channels dropped out. I know that was the remnants of hurricane Katrina, but I don't remember it raining more heavily than a typical storm. For the day or two that it rained, the satellite TV provided no channels or two channels (out of more than a hundred in the lineup).

==========

It's nice to be important, but it's more important to be nice. - John Cassis on manners

Ignoring juvenile attacks and remarks on the internet for over two decades.



Greybeard Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> In theory, Dish is going to *feel* slower for
> things like browsing, because latency is greater
> (or at least is *probably* greater). That is,
> because the time for the signal to go from your
> dish to the satellite and back down to the ground
> is (relatively) significant.
>
> OTOH, Dish survives and has its fans, so it can't
> be that horribly noticeable. And no ISP has a
> spotless record.
>
> It would be fun to get all available options in
> the same house and switch back and forth, see
> which "feels" best.

,
Attachments:

Dog Walker1 Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Grey,
>
> With Dish or other satellite TV/internet
> providers, do the TV signals/internet speed (i.e.,
> bandwidth) degrade substantially when it rains?

I honestly don't know. I would expect so, at least when it's raining hard: the signals gotta get there somehow. Whether it would manifest as actual reduced bandwidth or net slowth [no, not a real word!] due to packet loss I don't know. Good question. Surely there are Dish forums where folks discuss this?

Yeah (answering my own question):
https://www.wildblueworld.com/forum/archive/index.php/t-7758.html
https://support.dish.com/viewtopic.php?f=15&t=6010
http://downdetector.com/status/dish-network

Look for "rain" if it's not obvious. So..."Survey says yes". Of course Cox/FiOS aren't immune to water; our Cox connection used to suck whenever it rained until I got them out here enough times to get their attention. Finally they rolled a truck soon after rain and we found that one of the flowerpots was full of water. They couldn't fix that, but they did waterproof the connections in that flowerpot and it's been rock-solid since.

Mind you, they also had redone all the infrastructure in our subdivision a year or two before. Reliability was not great before that rework. So if your neighborhood hasn't been redone, it might be crappy; might not. FiOS has the advantage of always being new, since there was no fibre in there before.

I've written here before that the consensus seems to be that if FiOS works will for you, it's great; if you have problems, it's a disaster. Cox is more even: less great at best, less bad at worst. I've stuck with Cox through inertia and a visceral dislike of Verizon (plus not wanting to be forced off of copper for our landline).

Dog Walker1 Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Grey,
>
> With Dish or other satellite TV/internet
> providers, do the TV signals/internet speed (i.e.,
> bandwidth) degrade substantially when it rains?
>
> In 2005, my wife and I rented a vacation cabin
> with satellite TV in WV. When it rained, the
> signals for all or most channels dropped out. I
> know that was the remnants of hurricane Katrina,
> but I don't remember it raining more heavily than
> a typical storm. For the day or two that it
> rained, the satellite TV provided no channels or
> two channels (out of more than a hundred in the
> lineup).
>
> ==========
>
> It's nice to be important, but it's more important
> to be nice. - John Cassis on manners
>
> Ignoring juvenile attacks and remarks on the
> internet for over two decades.
>
>
>
> Greybeard Wrote:
> --------------------------------------------------
> -----
> > In theory, Dish is going to *feel* slower for
> > things like browsing, because latency is
> greater
> > (or at least is *probably* greater). That is,
> > because the time for the signal to go from your
> > dish to the satellite and back down to the
> ground
> > is (relatively) significant.
> >
> > OTOH, Dish survives and has its fans, so it
> can't
> > be that horribly noticeable. And no ISP has a
> > spotless record.
> >
> > It would be fun to get all available options in
> > the same house and switch back and forth, see
> > which "feels" best.


It does degrade with heavy weather. Usually not too bad now though.

Dish is fine for TV but you definitely do not want to use satellite Internet service unless you just have no other alternative. I had it for a while before fiber was available. Did the job (sorta) but it's a real kludge system. No reason to do that around here these days. If you're out in the boonies with no other service option then maybe. Better than dial-up but that's about the best that I'll give it. FIOS, Cox, or even using a hot spot with 4G cellular will be far better. In fact, though I haven't looked at it for a while now, I believe that where they can even they partner with other providers for wired/4G to provide the Internet part of their own service.

Greybeard Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------

[snip portion]

>
> I've written here before that the consensus seems
> to be that if FiOS works will for you, it's great;
> if you have problems, it's a disaster. Cox is more
> even: less great at best, less bad at worst. I've
> stuck with Cox through inertia and a visceral
> dislike of Verizon (plus not wanting to be forced
> off of copper for our landline).

Great summary about FIOS/Cox and good stuff about satellite as well.

Thanks, Grey!

If all posts on this forum were as informative, helpful, and polite as yours, the signal to noise ratio on the forum would skyrocket.

==========
==========

It's nice to be important, but it's more important to be nice. - John Cassis on manners

Ignoring juvenile attacks and remarks on the internet for over two decades.

Arguing by deflection or name-calling is an admission that you don't have a rational argument.

u3Vt7 Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------

[snip quotes of prior posts]

>
> It does degrade with heavy weather. Usually not
> too bad now though.
>
> Dish is fine for TV but you definitely do not want
> to use satellite Internet service unless you just
> have no other alternative. I had it for a while
> before fiber was available. Did the job (sorta)
> but it's a real kludge system. No reason to do
> that around here these days. If you're out in the
> boonies with no other service option then maybe.
> Better than dial-up but that's about the best that
> I'll give it. FIOS, Cox, or even using a hot spot
> with 4G cellular will be far better. In fact,
> though I haven't looked at it for a while now, I
> believe that where they can even they partner with
> other providers for wired/4G to provide the
> Internet part of their own service.

Thanks, u3Vt7 for the succinct and helpful post.

I was a long time cox customer but have switched to fios and overall have no complaints. With cox I could not access the dvr from other tvs with a cable box, but with verizon I can it uses a smaller terminal on a 2nd tv to access the dvr.

With cox, I got rid of the non-dvr stb because since I could not access my dvr it was pretty useless. I just used the basic cable direct coax feed since I didn't watch my 2nd tv enough to justify the cost. Fios? Not an issue. I was sick in bed and was able to watch my downstairs dvr. The connection quality is fine.

Also, the fios picture quality blows cox away. Cox compresses the HD signal going into my house, so it wasn't as good as fios. With fios, the SD channels look pretty good, way better than cox ever was.

An issue I had with cox would be prime time my picture would get pixelated and the sound would cut out. It was awful on live broadcasts, a little less noticeable on dvr recordings. I had the cox technicians out several times, but they never did permanently fix the issue. It got a little letter when I had the cable box plugged into an outlet timer so it would power cycle at 4AM...but I still got that pixelated crap. With FIOS, this is not an issue anymore.

Internet speed is night and day. FIOS clearly blew cox away. I did a speakeasy speed test between the 2 and fios was the clear winner. I know they have 75/75, but I just have 50/50...which is fine for me.

Land line? Cox seemed to have more outages...verizon no problems so far, but I don't really give a shit about my land line. My wife wants it, that's the only reason we have it.

If you do switch to cox, be damned sure you DO NOT get that damned scientific atlantic cable box. Those are low bid garbage boxes. I upgraded to the cisco one (1tb dvr space was nice) in the hopes of it fixing my pixelation issue, but it did not. The hardware was a little better.

WuveC Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> If you do switch to cox, be damned sure you DO NOT
> get that damned scientific atlantic cable box.
> Those are low bid garbage boxes. I upgraded to the
> cisco one (1tb dvr space was nice) in the hopes of
> it fixing my pixelation issue, but it did not. The
> hardware was a little better.

Um. Cisco bought SA in 2005, then sold that unit off last year. They don't make STBs any more from what I can see. So while I'm sure that the labels on the boxes were as you report, I'm not sure it's meaningful any more, alas.

I was actually fucking around with my XBox one night and discovered all these apps for movies. EPIC, Crackle, YouTube, and more. All Free. Just need an internet connection. Now I will admit the selection of movies is limited and they add new stuff v e r y s l o w l y but its free so what do you want. And how many fucking movies do you really need to watch in one month?

Re: "Heh, heh, what you said..."

Glad you enjoyed it. My phrasing was deliberate!

b7VWJ