Verizon FIOS TV reveals: faster speed, widgets and Slingbox-like streaming

During a recent media briefing, GearLive was able to get a sit down with Eric Rabe, the Senior VP of Media Relations for Verizon and talked FiOS and judging from the details, this is news that should make just about any Verizon FiOS customer a little happier.

To begin with, the Home Media Manager will be seeing an improvement. Currently you are able to stream audio and images from a networked PC, however they are working on adding support for video streaming. That sounds good so far, but thankfully that is not where the video related improvements are stopping. Also mentioned were some improvements to FiOS TV Central. As of now this is a nice feature to have, it allows you to manage your DVR from another internet connected device — it could be another computer, phone ect, however they are working on adding Slingbox-like streaming also. Of course, they did state that they needed to take care of some necessary agreements first. I also cannot help but wonder if we will have access to live streaming or streaming of content from the DVR.

Anyway, moving past video there are also some other goodies that were mentioned which include widgets for items like the weather, sports scores as well as social networking favorites like Facebook and Twitter. Additionally, they are also making some improvements to searches and the guide.

Finally, they mentioned the current Internet speeds, and when asked why they were not offering a 100 Mbps service, they responded by saying that they could but don’t. According to the rep, they have the capability, however their current fastest (50/20) is not that popular, instead most subscribers opt for the 20/5 speeds.

All-in-all it looks like FiOS customers will have plenty to look forward to. This news sure makes me glad I am moving to a home that has FiOS available, now bring on the Slingbox-like streaming.

Via [GearLive]