Yosser

Following on a bit from the Vonage thread...

I finally scraped together enough cash to buy a Phillips 42" 1080p LCD from Target ($798 + tax). I called Verizon, they actually gave me a nice upgrade to the Fios internet, plus I get the Hi def top box with DVR (I really don't even watch much t.v. but it all worked out cheaper per month than before).

Anyways, it took a few days to get the Hi def box, plugged her up, latched on the HDMI cable...and waited, and waited, made a cup of tea and waited some more..nothing. Last Wed I spent 3 hours, calling verizon, going to the Verizon forum help page, and connecting every F'kin color cable I had in the house....at midnight, I got a picture, but it was not 100% hi def.

I called Verizon the next day, and the girl said that the Phillips and Samsung LCD's were having a problem receiving a signal from the HDMI cable...so I thought bollocks to it, went back to Target, swapped the Phillips for a 40" Sony 1080p (extra $100) but worth it.

Took it back home, hooked up the cable....NOTHING...FFS! I didn't have time for a few days to call Verizon, so yesterday after another 2 hours on the phone, they sent a tech out....he swapped out the box,..and yey it was a problem in the Hi def box, now I had 100% HD but no menu or DVR? he replaced the router, cables, and sat there and scratched his head! ****ed if I know he said? so he went back to his van, got out another top box and hooked that up...now I have 100% HD with a DVR and menu that works......Now the Vonage is playing up.............FFS you can't win for losing!

Bluegrass Lass

We just got that same Sony 40" from Target for the $897 sale price. Was very happy to get that deal. However I was highly pissed that the UPS man left the damn tv on our front porch. Who knows how long it was there before we got home from work. I should have claimed it got stolen so I could get another one free. How do you like the picture?

Yosser

When I was pissed off with the whole Phillips thing, I just so happened to be on the Target website and noticed the Sony for $897. When I took back the phillips to the Garland Target store, they had actually put the Phillips 42" right next to the Sony 40" (at Walmart they are at opposite ends).

You could quite clearly see more color in the Sony, when I eventually got it all working, the sound is MUCH better with the Sony. Now that I have gold plated HDMI cabled Hi def, the picture and the colors are unreal...so I am very pleased with the Sony especially for that price!

Bluegrass Lass

Thanks for the review! Can't wait to put it up this weekend! I couldn't believe the price on that tv, tho! It was $100 cheaper than Walmart and Amazon. We had some gift cards, and after applying for the Target credit card to get the 10% off, we only paid about $650 for it!

Yosser

Thats fantastic, I already had a Target account, so I couldn't do the extra 10% off. You will be VERY pleased with Sony for $650.

I was just making a cup of coffee in the kitchen which is over 20 ft from the Sony and you can see every fine line and dimple on Juliets face (HD The morning show with Mike and Juliet)....I have also noticed alot of the news and sports programs sets have alot of orange, red and blue in the background, the colors are so vibrant, amazing

sambapink

Is your surname Hughes, by any chance?

Yosser

um no....but my dads nickname was Yosser (he's a builder..hence "I can do dat like")...I use to go on building sites in my summer hols to help out and earn cash....so I was aptly named YY (young yosser).

sambapink

Ah gotcha.. my family name is Hughes.. Dad was a roofer - The 'gis a job' joke can wear thin very quickly!!

hobbes79

Odd it didn't work at all. It's a "hand off" issue with the Verizon boxes... the TV should basically tell the box "oi, give me the HDMI signa", but it sometimes doesn't work.

We have a Samsung in the living room and a Philips in the bedroom. Both will probably have that problem every couple of months. A reset of the box fixes it and then I forget about it again. Verizon are meant to do a firmware upgrade to fix it, but we'll see.

When your tech guy got no menu or DVR, that's cos the box wasn't activated. Same thing happened to me when they sent me a new one for self install, but you can activate it on-line.

Bill_S

Please tell me you didn't go through all that just to watch Mike and Juliet FFS

Yosser

defintely not Mike......More of the Juliet (hers puuurty).

Yosser

It was not one but two set top boxes that were naff! The tech was pulling his hair out as he couldn't get an IP signal to the sony, but we had an IP signal in the Masterbed There was probably nothing wrong with the Phillips but the Verizon girl over the phone told me they wouldn't get the "handshake" thing corrected until March I just don't have the patience for that shite!

Overall Verizon product is very good, the tech guy was cool, but Verizon customer service over the phone suck big time!

Michael

That sure sounds like the house wiring is marginal causing a low signal strength in the main room being of low amplitude. I suspect the first box couldn't see the signal at all, the second was able to pick it up sometimes, and the third finally was able to see it all the time. Slight differences in the boxes allowed the boxes to react differently. I suspect that in the future you will experience more problems.

Something similar happened in my house when I upgraded from analog to digital cable. At first my master bedroom connection couldn't pick up digital at all but the living room connection was fine. First I removed all the splitters from the unused cable connectors. This allowed me to receive all the lower channels and every other channel on the higher channels. Then I tightened or changed every connection in the walls and all the channels worked but the on demand (similar to verizon concept) worked intermittently (sometimes it worked for a complete movie and other times it couldn't get started). Then I changed the box several times and the on demand either worked better or worse depending on the box but the problem never got completely solved. Finally I had to run a new cable from the main distribution box to the bedroom to completely solve the problem.

Digital is much more critical of house wiring than analog. When digital works it is so much better than analog but a weak signal causes a broken or lost picture where analog may only degrade slightly when the signal gets weak.

Did the technician check the signal strength? I suspect that if he did, the signal strength would have been at the lower level of the acceptable strength. Checking the signal strength using your TV (most TVs have a signal strength indicator in the menu) generally does not give an accurate indication of the signal strength since the test is done after it goes through the TVs AGC amplifiers. The only way to get a true signal strength reading is using a special tester (that doesn't use AGC amplifiers) that the technician should have had. In your case, the TVs signal strength indicator won't work anyway with the verizon concept but only works with direct connect cable or over the air signals.