Verizon FiOS home media server

[tchapin]

This looks interesting...

http://www.theverge.com/2011/12/23/2...tually-replace

Right now, having Verizon FiOS television means having a hefty set-top box under your television, but the company's planning on changing that next year. The company told TechCrunch that starting in late 2012, it's going to deliver a "media server" that will stream FiOS TV content to all your Wi-Fi connected devices. Mind you, since many televisions don't yet have Wi-Fi, you'll still need a separate box for them, but even in the short term we're looking at smaller boxes and a smaller overall footprint. Verizon's released a video depicting the basic idea, which we've embedded below, as well as another video demonstrating the reach of an 802.11n 5GHz MIMO signal while streaming 40Mbps 3D HD FiOS content. Pushing a battery-powered cart with a TV and wireless receiver on board, Verizon allegedly made it 200 feet down the hallway of a heavy-duty office building without degrading quality.

Think it'll be vaporware?

[stanger89]

No, but I think Verizon's idea of "all your Wi-Fi connected devices" will be quite a bit different than ours.

[panteragstk]

Originally Posted by stanger89

No, but I think Verizon's idea of "all your Wi-Fi connected devices" will be quite a bit different than ours.

Their idea of a "media server" is quite a bit different than ours as well.

[mistergq]

what is more impressive is the router/mimo. The current one is so outdated it needs to be updated.

[drewg]

I hope they hired somebody new to write their software for this thing and it is better than their multi-room DVR. Because, wow, that thing is craptastic!

I was at my inlaws yesterday, where they have Fios multi-room DVR. I holed up in a spare bedroom to stay out of the way before dinner & the other guests started to arrive. I started watching an in-progress "remote" recording from the family room DVR (NFL game) about 1 hour into the game. I used the "30 second" skip to skip past dead time in the game (and commercials). All was well until I came close to catching up to real time. At that point the 30-second skip stopped working. "oh well" I thought, and used the 2x/4x/8x smooth fast forward. That worked fine for 20 more minutes or so, and then "bam", it dumped me out of the recording & back into whatever the local STB was tuned to. I then had to re-start watching the recording from the beginning (and suffer through about 90 seconds of 8x ffw to get to where I was when it exited).

What I think must have happened was that it took a snapshot of the file length when I started playing the remote recording (say, 1 hour). Then after I was more than 1 hour in, it was no longer indexed & the 30 second skip stopped working. I can almost understand that, but then just dumping you out of the recording if you ffwd past the end? And then not offering to resume? To think that this garbage firmware is foisted on millions of users. It is amazing what people will tolerate..


Drew

[mistergq]

Its interesting that fios is copy free for cable card and the firewire ports are turned on with all the copy free channels. The reason I say that is because they lock down their DVR so much. They have a box that you can add an external hard drive too. but, that hard drive can only be plugged into that DVR box. If you have to get another box due to box malfunctioning - you lose all your recordings. I am not exactly sure what happens when you plug the external hard drive into a computer, but apparently the computer cannot access the drive.

[david1234]

Originally Posted by mistergq

Its interesting that fios is copy free for cable card and the firewire ports are turned on with all the copy free channels. The reason I say that is because they lock down their DVR so much. They have a box that you can add an external hard drive too. but, that hard drive can only be plugged into that DVR box. If you have to get another box due to box malfunctioning - you lose all your recordings. I am not exactly sure what happens when you plug the external hard drive into a computer, but apparently the computer cannot access the drive.

My guess is that the drive is encrypted with a key in the hardware.

Similar to what Sony did to the PS3. They encrypt the entire drive and then lock it the box, so nobody can copy anything... of course, if your system dies you lose all of your data! @!#$@#!~