Verizon Launches FiOS App for iPad, No Live TV Streaming

[MacRumors]

Earlier this year, we reported on Verizon's plans to launch an App Store application that would allow customers of the company's FiOS television subscription service to view live TV on the iPad. While the feature would at least initially be limited to streaming over the customer's own home Wi-Fi network, it marked an interesting method of deploying portable television capabilities around the home.

With Verizon at the time reporting that it hoped to launch the feature early next year as it brought content providers on board, today's release of a new Verizon FiOS Mobile application for the iPad brought some initial hopes that the feature might arrive a bit earlier than expected.

Unfortunately for those looking for the live TV streaming capabilities, they are not included in the debut version of this application. Instead, Verizon FiOS Mobile duplicates some of the functionality already available in existing iPhone applications, providing customers with the ability to manage settings and DVR recordings from their iPad, as well as use their iPad as a remote control.

FiOS customers can use FiOS Mobile for iPad to set parental controls, set bookmarks, browse and search TV programming, browse and search thousands of VOD listings, update set-top box names, use their iPad as a remote control to interact with FiOS TV (HD set-top box required) and see What’s Hot on FiOS.

DVR customers can program their DVRs remotely through their iPad. This includes setting any of their DVRs to record from virtually anywhere they happen to be, set a series recording, view the status of any of their DVRs and see how much space is left for recording, and view their lists of scheduled and recorded programs.

Verizon notes that it is working on additional features for the application, including the ability to "flick" photos from mobile devices to the television, but the company is silent on its plans live TV streaming. It is unclear, however, whether the functionality would be deployed as an update to this application or as a standalone application dedicated to streaming.

Article Link: Verizon Launches FiOS App for iPad, No Live TV Streaming

 

[TheRealTVGuy]

Well... YAWN....

This app has just entered the Booooooring/Near-Useless category.

Who needs another remote control app...?

 

[Doctor Q]

This app has just entered the Booooooring/Near-Useless category.

Who needs another remote control app...?

It's pretty clear that Verizon has bigger plans. I think we should welcome the competition they'll provide.

 

[ssanders79]

Verizon already has 2 iPhone/touch apps one is a DVR manager and the other is a remote control. The remote control app is useless in my house, but the DVR manager is great and I use it more than I do the on screen menus to manage recorded content. Now if they would just allow streaming of recorded content from my DVR to my iOS devices I would be a happy camper. The iPad app appears to combine the features of the other apps into one nice package. Still the remote feature is pointless.

 

[LanPhantom]

Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; U; CPU iPhone OS 4_2_1 like Mac OS X; en-us) AppleWebKit/533.17.9 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/5.0.2 Mobile/8C148 Safari/6533.18.5)

Looks like the are wrapping their virtual arms around the iOS family getting ready for their launch of the iPhone. I'm sure vCast will follow as soon as the iPhone is on the VZW service.

 

[lord patton]

Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; U; CPU iPhone OS 4_2_1 like Mac OS X; en-us) AppleWebKit/533.17.9 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/5.0.2 Mobile/8C148 Safari/6533.18.5)

Why does that screen have a giant, ugly image of a remote control? That couldn't actually be their UI for a tablet app, could it?

 

[reden]

Complain, complain, complain.

 

[BiikeMike]

ssanders, I disagree. I love the fact that the iPhone fios remote has a QWERTY keyboard for searches!

 

[StudioGuy]

I do agree with the TV listings comment, and the DVR info (when it works and doesn't timeout like most often). I have used the old FIOS app for TV guide viewing too. Nice and quick.

<Or, is the issue my iPhone already has the old DVR manager app, and so that locks out the iPad app from using it?? The old app fails often too, but not every time.>

It only "sees" my DVR set top box, and doesn't show the others. Maybe that's expected. But, when I log in on the website, I can certainly see all of them.

Looking forward to updates I guess. I don't expected streaming, but surprise me!

 

[talmy]

With the sale of Verizon's land operations to Frontier in my state earlier this year, the remote accessibility went away However I could never get it to work -- I think their web service was somehow tied to Internet Explorer. So it's good to see something that works in Apple-land, even if not for a Mac. A shame it won't be here, though.

 

[b3beater]

While I don't have an iPad I do have an iPhone and the DVR app NEVER works. If you do a little searching you'll see that most folks complain that this app never works and Verizon hasn't done anything to try to remedy this problem.

I don't like a company pushing new products when their old products never work. It's fake marketing for their FIOS service.

 

[StudioGuy]

better news

While I don't have an iPad I do have an iPhone and the DVR app NEVER works. If you do a little searching you'll see that most folks complain that this app never works and Verizon hasn't done anything to try to remedy this problem.

Some better news after my comment above -- my router had died, and was replaced. By disabling the remote access on the DVR, rebooting the DVR, and re-enabling it, all is back to working - on the old iPhone app plus the new iPad one.

Ironically I don't see any new port forwards setup, but at least it works -- for now.

FWIW.

 

[sk4prez2020]

**** verizon!

YUP!