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FiOS TV in Plano Soon?

October 27, 2005

When I first started down the little multi-month donkey-ride to get FiOS service, I wasn’t paying any attention to their TV play.

In the meantime, Verizon has launched their first FiOS TV customers in Keller, TX, and information on their service lineups and pricing has started to come out.

They’ve also petitioned for and received PUC approval to roll out cable service in other TX neighborhoods, including mine (Plano).


This thing looks like the bomb for HD — SatelliteGuys has a rundown of what’s available now or soon in this forum thread.

FIOS will be carrying EVERY High Deifintion Channel Currently Available!

SatelliteGuys has learned that FIOS will soon be announcing that they have signed a MAJOR deal with Cablevision for the following program packages.

The COMPLETE VOOM 21 HD Package
AMC, IFC and WE.
Rainbow On Demand (Mag rack, sportskool, IFC Films, World Picks).
Cablevisions Regional Networks

In addition a major deal has been signed with FOX to offer all of the FOX owned channels, including Fox O&O affiliates as well as their yet to be launched HD suite.

FIOS will carry all offerings bY In Demand including all their VOD PPV offerings (including all In Demands Sports Packages, such as MLB, NHL and NBA) IN-HD 1 and IN-HD 2

FIOS will offer all of VIACOMs SD & HD channels includiing some yet announced HD content as well as their O&O markets.

FIOS will offer HD Net and HDNET Movies

To sum things up FIOS will offer EVERY HD Channel available via Satellite by the end of the year. (Note that FIOS is a FIBER Cable Service NOT a Satellite service or company)

Towards the end of that thread, there are links to a price sheet and current channels from the Keller market. On that I noticed that they are also offering all of the HD local stations over the fiber, plus NBC/Universal, which means (among other things) Battlestar Galactica in HD. Outstanding!

I’m pumped.

It’s looking more and more like my FiOS internet service (15mb/2mb) will actually be installed tomorrow, so I called Verizon to ask about TV availability. At this point, they’ll only say “before the first of the year”, but I’m betting it may be well before then…

Service offerings include HD PVR capability, plus HD and SD set-top boxes. I could see displacing my Dishplayer 942 with a Verizon HD PVR, but I’m going to have to look into seeing if an MCE IR-Blaster can be coaxed into changing channels on one of the SD set-top boxes.

This may put me onto the “need cablecard HD support in MCE” bandwagon. One positive side note is that the STBs are Motorola based, running Microsoft Foundation Edition, so they might be one of the early candidates for support, if and when…

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