With the current economic issues running about, expensive entertainment options are being trimmed back; people are going back to their best entertainment hours per dollar spent, and nowhere is that more evident than in the rise of new subscriptions to cable television services.



One of the more intriguing options for cable television services isn't from any cable company. It's from Verizon FiOS. Verizon's Fiber Optic Services (FiOS) is a bundled internet connectivity, digital video, and voice line service. Verizon FiOS has been aggressively pushing the internet connectivity aspects of this service to their customers; FiOS internet connectivity starts at 10 mbps download and goes up (on their highest tier of service) to 50 mbps.

In many ways, it's not the internet connectivity that's so impressive on the Verizon FiOS network. It's the FiOS TV services. Digital video is incredibly bandwidth intensive, more so than a standard internet service can provide. While there are set top boxes that will download 'high definition' movies available from Blockbuster and Netflix, these services provide only the lowest end of the "High Def" range of resolutions – 1366x768 resolution, and at 60 Hz.

Even so, when you 'check out' a movie with this type of service, there's usually a 5-10 minute wait while it buffers the movie before it shows it to you. The reason for this limit is that they're working directly from the Internet for their services, which means they're limited by the trunk-to-trunk bandwidth limits.

What Verizon FiOS TV service does is host the content on Verizon's own network – which means that they download quickly, and when Verizon calls it High Definition, they're talking about full 1080p resolution, and their on-demand movies start almost instantly. FiOS TV's on demand library is 11,000 movies, and growing – many of them available for no charge whatsoever. Even better, Verizon FiOS is very aggressive about bringing new titles into the library shortly after they hit theaters; roughly the same time a video is out on DVD or Blu-Ray, there's a decent chance that Verizon will have it available for an On-Demand rental.

The FiOS TV programming tiers are modeled after a conventional cable channel lineup – there's the Basic package, which has local channels in high definition, plus anywhere from 15 to 50 other channels on top of it; this includes the NFL network in many markets. There are also expanded tiers (Essentials), which add upwards of 200 channels, and the Extreme HD version of Essentials, which puts all your channels in the highest HDTV formats available.

Quite simply, if you're looking to get entertainment value for the dollar, or get the most out of your home theater system, Verizon FiOS is the best option available for downloadable digital video – provided you live in an area where it's available. Contact your local Verizon representative today about getting access to the best digital media content available, bundled with the fastest connection to the internet allowed in the United States.

Verizon FiOS TV (fiber-optic television) is the fastest and largest growing network in the United States...and it keeps spreading across our nation and is allowing FiOS to stand up against regular television.