R.I.P. Voom

Uh, that's what I said. Verizon gets compressed feeds and doesn't recompress them. The satellite providers get compressed feeds then recompress them.

Ah, I see. So digital OTA isn't MPEG2? What is it?

I think OTA signals are, in fact, MPEG-2 -- I was just saying that FiOS doesn't turn around and recompress the compressed feed. In theory, FiOS HD and OTA HD should be equal in bandwidth and picture quality.

Precisely. OTA terrestrial HD signals are MPEG-2, typically at 19 Mb/sec. The satellite and cable providers often convert to MPEG-4 (nothing wrong with that) and reduce the bandwidth (and that's where the problems begin).

My parents used to have AT&T U-verse (TV over DSL). They moved and can't get U-verse in their new place, but it comes with free (analog) basic cable. Solution? They have an OTA antenna to get HD local channels and the free cable for what it's got. My father, he of the massively maladjusted TV settings who wouldn't know contrast from brightness or color from tint, was blown away by how much better terrestrial HD is than the same channels through AT&T U-verse.

Correct, US based OTA DTV is MPEG2 based. ATSC-2 standard includes support for H.264 (MPEG4 AVC), but it isn't in use anywhere yet. Bitrate in the US is 19.4mbit, though many channels will divide this up for multiple streams, (IE, the whole 13.1, 13.2 13.3 sub channel setup) when they aren't using all the bandwidth on the main channel.

My earlier Voom comment came from their high quality over satellite. I made the switch to them from Dish back in 2005, and the difference was pretty amazing. Around the time of shutdown, Voom was working to convert everything over to H.264 to be able to recompress the incoming feeds without introducing visible artifacts, thus allowing them to add more channels. Having just a few months of Voom was enough to make me not want to go back to a provider that recompresses everything to the point of artifacting.

Okay, that's what I thought. Then people are just being contrary and nit-picky. Fine, less compressed. But for all intents and purposes, since you can't get a signal that is uncompressed, and if every paid-provider is giving you re-compressed video, I'm going to continue to call Verizon's product uncompressed.

...and then administer a swift kick to the groin of any nerd who nitpicks.

Side tangent here, do modern video cameras have an equivalent to RAW for picture cameras? I know there are lossless codecs used for preserving quality while editing, but I've never looked to see if that is to preserve the existing compression quality coming in from the camera, or if it's to preserve the uncompressed level while applying some data reduction.

The Red cameras appear to do lossy compression, but not sure if these are truly representative of what one might find across the board.

I've never heard of a consumer digital motion camera shooting any kind of uncompressed video, raw or otherwise. It would be terribly expensive in terms of storage space and write speed.

Isn't everything right now pretty much using AVC exclusively?

Apparently not consumer-grade cameras.

Do the RED cameras shoot uncompressed?

Back to Fios for a moment:

I just finished setting up a brand new wireless router. I went with a Netgear N750 because it seemed to have pretty much everything.

The problem came when I tried to hook it all up. I already knew it was a challenge to connect my own router to Fios, and I knew I'd receive little to no support from phone support, but it ended up being a much more difficult process than I'd anticipated, and I have no less than three devices involved in getting internet to my computers.

First, I have the VDSL modem that baffles 95% of Fios phone support technicians. Then I have the Actiontec router, for which I eventually read how to put it in bridge mode, which was a little tricky but thankfully did the job. At the end I have the Netgear.

It was a PITA, but it was worth it. The Netgear is fantastic, and every computer in my home is getting 20Mbps or more to the net. I'll be testing computer to computer speeds at some point, but for now I'm just glad it's working and it's time for some well-earned dinner

Bridge mode? This reads to me that you are doing wireless between the Actiontec router and the Netgear N750, which I would imagine to be less then ideal. Am I misunderstanding your configuration?

Almost certainly. Most ISP-provided CPE routers will either consume an IP address themselves or function as a simple Ethernet-to-DSL adapter. In networking lingo, such an adapter that does nothing but convert one LAN protocol to another is known as a bridge.

Bridge mode on a DSL modem disables all the routing functions, letting his Netgear handle that. It's a little bit of manual work since a PPPoE username and password needs to be entered into the router, and sometimes providers won't give this info out.

That makes sense, thanks for the explanations.

So, yeah, about the FiOS networking setup... I went through the process of making the FiOS modem/router into a bridge a long time ago due to the general crapitude of the FiOS Actiontec modem. It's not the worst I've ever seen, but it's not what I want being my main router, and the wifi strength is terrible (I've also since added 802.11n, which it lacks.)

Anyway, Verizon set-top boxes do not like being behind a non-standard router. If you do the bridge setup exactly right (the instructions for this are pretty tedious, far beyond what you'd normally assume would be necessary) you can get it to the point where the STBs can call out for guide data and view VOD, but with most of the setups, you really have to do serious hackery (such as adding a *third* router just to serve up a particular address to the FiOS router's WAN port, and telnetting into the FiOS router when it boots up to add a default route, which needs to be repeated each time it reboots) to get the remote DVR feature working.

It's all so needlessly complicated. I still haven't gotten the remote DVR thing working yet -- I'm not willing to give in and add a third router just to get it going, but I may have to. Definitely one of the more disappointing aspects of my switch so far.

Bitt, I think you're talking about something different from Phoenix42. There is nothing wireless in the setup I described above (except for the LAN of the Netgear). (*edit* I re-read your post, Bitt, and what you're describing is what I understood, but you were confirming his suspicions of wireless, which was not what I'm doing. I think I get what you're saying, though */edit*)

And Tom, it's not the DSL modem that's bridged, its the Fios Actiontech router.

From how I understand it, all I'm doing is completely bypassing the Fois router by telling it to bridge the WAN ethernet with whatever I plug into a LAN port. That's all I really wanted it to do anyway.

Tony, you're right about it being a pain. I haven't checked to see if the guide data is still working on my bedroom set top box. If I had to guess, I'd say it isn't.

But that wouldn't matter much to me. It hasn't worked for nearly four years, and we don't really care. We rarely watch that TV anyway, and when we do we usually know what channel number we need.

You pretty much described the reasons I've been forgoing my Fios router since I first got Fios. The default router is better than most, but still short on features. I at least need N, and gigabit ethernet should be nice in the future.

Ok, now I'm just really confused by your setup, even after reading the explanation in the YouTube thread again.

So if I understand this right, you have:

1. a VDSL modem that carries the signal in from the wall, and provides a single LAN port. This is already in bridge mode, and doesn't do any routing. Who makes this?

2. A separate Actiontec router with no DSL capabilities, that plugs in to the VSDL modem, that you also have in bridge mode. Normally this would also do routing. (Every Actiontec unit I've come across in the past has always been a combination DSL modem and router)

3. A Netgear router acting as your actual home router, receiving a public IP on it's WAN port.

Mostly curious about all this, since I am looking to move into a FiOS area in 2 months, and it may be in an area they can't run fibre all the way to the apartment. I would like to keep my Airport as my main router, to continue to be able to use Wake on Demand from the internet.

I meant "almost certainly" he was misunderstanding.

Which I was, and Bitt was wording my inability to understand nicely.

Umm, but it's not nitpicking. Uncompressed HD is between 1.5 and 3 Gbps/s, unless your FIOS is running at that speed then it's compressed. It might not be re-compressed, but it's still compressed.

What's wrong with trying to use the correct terminology?

Maybe we should use the terms recompressed and unrecompressed.

Sorry, I know it's a weird setup, and like I said, it's one that confuses even the phone support people at Verizon. You should hear the reactions I get when I tell them I have a DSL modem.

Anyway, yes, so far you've mostly got it down. The weird thing is, it appears that this VDSL modem (a Zyxel model - this is the closest image I could find, but it doesn't have an antenna) it looks like originally it was also a router. It has a telephone jack and four ethernet ports, but it appears that it's permanently set up in bridge mode and doesn't do any routing...


The Actiontec is definitely not a DSL modem. The Actiontec's WAN port is connected to one (any) of the ethernet ports on the Zyxel modem. I believe that in many/most Fios installs, the Actiontec is actually set up to receive its data through the coax connection unless programmed otherwise. The instructions I followed assumed a coax connection, but since I'm connecting to the modem I'm of course connected through ethernet. The coax is still used in ethernet setups to get guide data and VOD.


Exactly. In the admin area, I can tell that the Netgear its self is getting the public IP address all the way through the other two pieces of equipment. To be honest, I'm not confident I set up the Actiontec correctly, but essentially I'm getting the result I wanted so I'm not questioning it

I will note that I just checked my bedroom TV and the guide data is gone again. Oh well, I'd rather have a rock-solid network than guide data on a TV we watch for 10 minutes every year.


It's possible they've set it up my way, but like I've said earlier, they make every attempt to set it up with fiber to the home. And like I've said a few times already, this setup is apparently so uncommon that the majority of tier one phone support people haven't been trained on it yet. I was relieved when the lady I spoke to yesterday was familiar with my setup and didn't think I was an idiot when I mentioned my DSL modem.

Also, if you DO have my setup, I'm not so sure you'll need the Actiontec router in the middle there. For the entire time I've had Fios, I just had my own router (an Airport Extreme most of the time) plugged right into the modem. This time, though, that didn't seem to be working, and I needed my network to be up quickly so I tried this method.

Unfortunately, it looks like Tony wasn't kidding when he described the great lengths you need to go to for getting Actiontec to deliver guide data to your STBs. I thought I was set up to do so, but clearly it didn't work. Hopefully Tivo will come out with their multi-room product soon and make this point moot.

Yeah. Here's the dslreports.com FAQ on the eight (!) different configurations people generally use (it looks like your insane setup isn't one of them.) I've got option #5 going, but I'm trying to work through the suggestions in this monster thread to get remote DVR working.

Nothing, but it's a silly thing to argue about with respect to Verizon's marketing. They're not recompressing it, so it's uncompressed... by them. I doubt many people in the world have ever seen a truly uncompressed HD stream with their own eyes, so picking on this particular example of marketingspeak seems like a waste of time.

See also, arguments about the number of HD channels each carrier has... The lying there is even worse.

I'm getting pretty excited about these new, seemingly more solid rumors of the new Tivo products.

This would be a perfect setup for my mother, but it all depends on how they price the monthly plan:

- If you only pay the usual price for the main box, terrific!
- If you pay a little more for the main box, that wouldn't be too objectionable.
- If you pay the same for the main box and something like $5 for each additional one, it starts becoming a tougher sell.
- If you pay the usual price for each box, with their normal multi-room discount for the other boxes, then there really wouldn't be much point to buying these products other than the [presumably] cheaper price for the "Preview" boxes.

Either way, I'd be excited for the four tuner box alone. I still run into conflicts, especially on Thursday nights when the networks seem to schedule everything.

I always forget that not everyone can record 8 things at once.

Based on the current drivel that is passing as entertainment, I can't imagine ever needing to record 8 things at once.