An Overview of the Legendary 1gbps. Many pics, more info as you scroll!
Installation was a breeze, with the techs showing up promptly at the beginning of the appointment. It took about 1.5 hours, with expectations of 3 hours max, and warnings of 4 hours. I was quite surprised and happy as I had to barricade my dog in my workshop while the crew was going in and out (sad puppy). They certainly knew what they were doing, and it made my oversight unnecessary.
They used what small amount of coax I had, and added new coax where I needed it, and they even left some extra Cat5 bundled in my ceiling. Sweet. I live in a very old house with aging electric wires and nonexistent modern luxuries such as coax in every room or even a digital antenna. I do have a huge antenna that will suit my growing ham radio obsession, but that's another post.
The team sure brought a lot of gear. I have a stack of boxes left over. I suppose I will keep them.
The router and 2tb network storage unit + dvr are located on one side of the room and the tv decoder is located near my tv upstairs and one downstairs in my kitchen. The one in the kitchen doubles as a WiFi repeater. SWEET. It's nice to have maxed bars for full house internet coverage.
Each TV decoder gets a standard bluetooth+ir remote, and one Nexus 7 16gb to control it all. Luckily I have a Nexus 7 already, so i have one for each TV but I had no idea mine was an older model. The size difference is noticeable, as well as the battery life. I much prefer the new one- it's so sexy. Regardless, both can control either TV or both TVs, as well as my Samsung Galaxy S3, so the combinations are pretty cool. The app for fiber can be downloaded via Google Play store, or for iOS in the apple store.
Before I get to the fiber application, let me point out that I was using a Roku with another 24" LCD monitor in my kitchen, it turns out that the LCD monitor was using an HDMI to DVI adapter and Google TV did NOT like it. The monitor I switched it out with has straight HDMI in and that solved it. Also, I am still working on sound solutions and have not fully tested the analog breakout port yet, so am using basic TV sound (the 24LCD has crappy speakers, too).
The Google experience via tablet:
Installation was a breeze, with the techs showing up promptly at the beginning of the appointment. It took about 1.5 hours, with expectations of 3 hours max, and warnings of 4 hours. I was quite surprised and happy as I had to barricade my dog in my workshop while the crew was going in and out (sad puppy). They certainly knew what they were doing, and it made my oversight unnecessary.
They used what small amount of coax I had, and added new coax where I needed it, and they even left some extra Cat5 bundled in my ceiling. Sweet. I live in a very old house with aging electric wires and nonexistent modern luxuries such as coax in every room or even a digital antenna. I do have a huge antenna that will suit my growing ham radio obsession, but that's another post.
The team sure brought a lot of gear. I have a stack of boxes left over. I suppose I will keep them.
 |
| Mucho Gear! |
 |
| Router and Network Attached Storage + DVR |
 |
| A dusty mess of me new TV decoder on top of what used to run my tv for half a decade- a WMC setup. |
 |
| The LCD monitor pwns as a TV in my kitchen. Need company while cooking for my lonely self. |
 |
| Pretty standard remote, but with options for bluetooth and IR. |
 |
| One is sexier. |
 | |
| One on the right is older. |
The Google experience via tablet:
The Guide- Tap on a show to play it. Simple.
At the bottom of the guide it shows you what's playing, with a convenient pause button.
At the top, you can select what TV your tabet controls, and it shows what's playing where. If you select 'tablet', whatever channels you select will stream to the tablet. Not every channel can do this, however, but there are many that do.
If you tap and hold on a channel it will give you a great page of details.
Tapping the Google fiber logo will give you previous channels for fast navigation/previous type functions, and access to the DVR and Discover options.
The DVR lists all your shows with unwatched or watched status, as well as the number of shows recorded. As you can see, you can sort in a few categories. Alphabetically, and a few other options in the right sort menu are available.
More options for each series or show recorded.
Discover will be renamed On Demand or something similar, as I have learned. This is where you can rent movies, or find on demand movies/shows, including movies and shows from your Netflix or Vudu accounts if you have them.
One of the best features of this Android application is probably the search feature and 'Smart Record'. You can search the TV for ANYTHING. Search all shows by actor, or any other keyword. You can then record all shows with that actor in it. Various recording options exist for each smart recording you create, with defaults in place. You can exclude reruns if you want, or limit it to just one channel. Pretty neat. Sorry no pics for that but you get the idea. You can also do all this with your standard Google remote control, and all this will appear on-screen rather than your tablet, albeit slightly larger and adjusted for the TV.
The quality is amazing and I am still experiencing hiccups but ultimately, badass. I have had no issues downloading my ENTIRE Steam library and uploading anything is a breeze. We're talking seconds and minutes. I have not tried the NAS for pics and music to stream, but I'm sure it's just peachy. So, I am sorry if I made you jelly- but my bandwidth>your excuse for bandwidth. OH YEAH. ENJOY the picture below as you weep. Don't hate though, you are welcome to come over and experience it if you need to. It is...almost...spiritual.
