Discussions have heated up around Verizon’s HD plans for FiOS, and there’s even a short war of words going on between EngadgetHD and Verizon’s policy blog. I’m still skeptical that Verizon has to get aggressive with its HD offerings immediately, but there is certainly a vocal group of folks who believe differently. In all of the comments I’ve read in different online forums, here are a few interesting nuggets I’ve found:
- Even those people who are threatening to abandon FiOS if more HD content isn’t added (again, I believe they’re a small but vocal minority) are willing to give Verizon some time to “make things right”.
- Verizon has stockpiled good will among customers for its picture quality (Yay Motorola set-tops!), “rock solid” Internet service (Yay Motorola optical networking gear!) and multi-room DVR service (Yay Motorola engineering!)*.
- The top five channels FiOS subscribers want to see in HD (according to an admittedly small poll) are Discovery HD, Sci-Fi HD, FX HD, USA HD and Versus/Golf Channel HD.
The bottom line is that Verizon is adding HD channels, even if the process is not as fast as everyone would like. And at the same time Verizon is pushing the envelope with new services. It’s just not possible to please everyone all of the time.
*This is a Motorola blog after all…
The bottom line is VZ and Comcast will be losing a lot of HDTV customers to DirectTV and they should be very concerened.
The issues with VZ is that people were under the impression HD content was not a problem due to unlimited bandwidth issues only to find out there are bandwidth issues and their only concern seems to be adding games.
Games? Holy crap!
[...] you believe Verizon needs more HDTV or doesn’t need it, the operator announced today that it will have more than 150 HD channels by [...]