FiOS TV subscribers in the Northeast woke up Tuesday morning (Jan. 10) to a new way of interacting and enjoying their TV experience. The new benefits are the result of Verizon’s continued transformation of FiOS TV viewing by bringing the next generation of its FiOS TV Interactive Media Guide to subscribers in the company’s New York, Massachusetts and Rhode Island service areas.

More than 4.2 million households in these states can now take advantage of award-winning FiOS TV and the advanced IMG. Introduced in 2007, the FiOS TV IMG was the first broadband platform to pull together content from broadcast TV, the Internet and users’ own personal media into one media-management system.

It has since evolved into an in-depth, interactive TV experience, with applications for advanced/intuitive search, social networking, Internet video, personal media streaming, high-definition music, remote DVR controls, account management and billing functions, multi-screen/mobile viewing and much more.

The company used customer feedback taken in through its product development labs, field trials and online consumer forums to create many of the more than 25 new upgrades to FiOS TV’s advanced IMG that are now available to subscribers in the tri-state area. The enhancements include greater personalization and customization, easier navigation, deeper search, bigger storage options and optimization for new 3D technology.

“Customers are at the center of everything we do, and that includes how we develop our products and services,” said Susan Retta, vice president of marketing for Verizon’s Northeast area.

“FiOS TV isn’t about passive video watching – it has evolved into an entertainment and information destination. Our new generation of FiOS TV is all about simplicity of design, increased user interactivity and ease of use. It’s yet another way we want our customers to get the most out of their FiOS services.”

Highlights include:

• Improved search capabilities, which provide a smarter search function that predicts what the customer is looking for and automatically provides potential matches. FiOS TV customers also can filter and sort by channel, and more easily locate favorite programs.
• DVR enhancements, which give FiOS TV customers more control with the following:
• DVR chaptering, giving viewers DVD-like capabilities to jump ahead or resume viewing at a particular moment of recorded programming by using on-screen thumbnails in 10-minute increments, providing more visual navigation.
• Multi-hub DVR, which turns any DVR or HD set-top box in the home into a “hub,” allowing customers to record and manage DVR settings from any room in the home, provided one of the DVRs is a multi-room DVR.
• eSATA external storage device compatibility, available with most FiOS TV DVRs, allowing for increased overall storage capacity. The eSATA hard drives can be purchased at most consumer electronics stores and will automatically record customer selections once plugged into the DVR.
• New ”play all” and “delete all” options, allowing customers to play episodes back-to-back and automatically delete all episodes of a show with the push of a button.

• Personalization features, which let FiOS TV customers enjoy entertainment on their own terms, including:
• New parental control options that make monitoring children’s viewing even easier, with the ability to block out portions of programming by rating during key hours of the day, like homework time, and schedule certain times for Parental Controls to be automatically turned on and off for greater flexibility.
• Guide customization, enabling a variety of settings, with a mini guide on the bottom of the screen, a half guide on the right side of the screen, and a full guide with a look at more hours of scheduled programming.

• 3D content software, which automatically detects when a customer tunes to a 3D program or channel and instantly changes the necessary settings for watching those programs on a 3D television set.

Verizon’s FiOS TV Interactive Media Guide can be accessed with the FiOS TV remote control or by using Verizon’s FiOS Mobile application, which turns an iPhone, iPod Touch, iPad or Android device into a remote control for a FiOS HD set-top box, making parental controls, customized interactive applications and program recording options easy to access.

The next-generation FiOS TV is built upon a long series of innovations, including Flex View and FiOS TV Online, which extend FiOS TV beyond the home to the Internet and a range of mobile devices; free interactive applications including Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Yelp, HSN Shop By Remote, TMZ and others;

Media Manager, which allows customers to access on their TVs personal photos, music and videos from their computers; and In-Home Agent, which frees customers to use simple online tools to diagnose and resolve a range of service issues.

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