New FIOS Setup

Buy Tivo Bolt and if you need a 2nd box just get a Mini, the greatest purchase I ever made, easy to setup, excellent picture quality and very good program guide and recording, they work greatest and can’t figure out why those companies don’t adapt to Tivo products, and tivo customer service is very good.
I have been using Fios and dish for many years, and in all I got away by paying any rentals, by switching back and forth, but my experience with their boxes it has been, very mediocre say the least, they are buggy and clunky.buy a quantum getaway router from ebay for around $30, so you won’t be paying any rental whatsoever.

 

You don't say what your setup is but I have FIOS and the only thing I rent from Verizon are the cable cards. You only need a set top box if you want to watch a TV directly and not through the TiVo. You can use any router.

 

I only use a pair of cable cards and the FiOS Quantum Gateway router. The FiOS-provided router makes setup for a MoCA network much easier if you're not too technically inclined. I bought it from Verizon a year or so ago, so I don't pay a monthly fee. I have two Bolts and two Minis, so in equipment costs, Verizon only gets about $10 a month from me for the cable cards. Eight tuners (four per Bolt) and 6 TB of HD space, as I upgraded the Bolts to 3 TBs each. I think FiOS and TiVO are the perfect marriage quite frankly. HOWEVER, be aware you WILL NOT have access to FiOS On Demand programming unless you have a FiOS STB. If that's important to you, then you might need the FiOS hardware. Good luck.

 

Yep, that's correct. I never found their offerings compelling enough to put up with the headaches of their crappy DVRs. Which, I'm told, have gotten "less worse" in recent years. But then I'd have to rent those and that's not going to happen. I already have lifetime Tivo (Roamio and Mini) and they work great with FIOS. Just one M-card (cablecard) for each Roamio to unlock their 6 tuners. The Mini's need nothing from Verizon as they just connect to your own Tivo.

 

Clarification: The Minis don't actually connect directly to the TiVo. They communicate with the TiVo by connecting to the same network, either by ethernet or MoCA.

 

In Verizon's defense, its On Demand offerings are really no different from anybody else's. It's the same material offered in a thousand different other places. And "less worse" is very subjective. While they may offer more tuners and HD space than before, they are still buggy as hell and the lag is atrocious. I will never go back to using the FiOS DVRs unless they gave me one for free.

 

Hi,
The first thing I would recommend is that you purchase your own router either the newest Verizon FIOS Gateway G1100 MoCA2.0 (dual band AC) off of Ebay, usually in the $125 range, or cheaper yet the Actiontec W1424WR Rev I (single band, N speed, MoCA 1.1) off Ebay for $50 or less. This will save you $10 a month. Verizon charges $5 a month for cable cards and they usually make it difficult to order a cable card with the initial order and near impossible to make an order without at least one of their boxes. The work around is to place the order online and then call to have the order modified or use the DSLReports Verizon Direct forum. If forced to take their crap initially, just take it back to a full service store and get a receipt, or ship stuff back to them but save tracking information.
To get a Tivo and minis, remember that minis are always cheaper from a non-Tivo source, aka Amazon, Ebay, or online, I recommend getting the newer Version 2 (93000) series with both IR and RF remote but the older one (IR only) will also work fine.
Getting your hands on a 6 tuner Roamio Plus or Pro would be best but if you have a good friend or family member who has been with Tivo for a few years, they might be able to buy a Roamio Pro with 3TB drive with lifetime subscription for about $600 plus tax for you. That is a sweet deal because Tivo's new pricing model would cost you $600 just for the lifetime service, otherwise you buy the unit and have to pay monthly service for the unit for $15, still cheaper than Verizon especially with the new minis that have lifetime service included in the $120 or less range. The one thing you don't get though is VOD but you do get access to several streaming services, Netfilx, Amazon, etc., with a separate subscription. You can also order big PPV events though by calling Verizon.
EDIT: Transferring off of the Tivos can be done with a few free softwares unless the shows are flagged to prevent this, currently I believe HBO, Showtime, and the Fox channels are blocked on Fios. There are active Forums for information and assistance here, http://www.tivocommunity.com/tivo-vb/forumdisplay.php?s=&daysprune=-1&f=29
You can also consider the newest Tivo, the Bolt, which is much faster, and comes with 1 yr subscription included in the initial purchase for $300 or less, but then it's $150 a yr for subscription or $600 for lifetime and the other issues, smaller hard drive, and only 4 tuners.

 

Two of my four Tivo were refurbs from Tivo directly, worth checking as they're typically about $100 cheaper.