[Dr.Dave]

I wasn't asking about River TV and other third party ISP and IPTV services.

The legal differences between Cable TV and OTT available on any ISP were discussed in that thread. No reason to take this thread off topic to rehash them.

 

[ExRobotGuy]

I posted this over at DSL also....Has anyone found out about picture quality? How does the bitrate compare with Tivo 4k cable? Also as mentioned earlier, what modem comes with it and can it be bridged unlike CODA 4589 when you have Tivo?

I'm posting this to receive up-dates. I'm considering Epico or Fibe and would like to know about anyones experiences with this service. Compression on 4k, cloud playback quality, etc.

 

[taylormade]

I posted this over at DSL Reports for those of you that might not see it.

FYI: I was a Tivo user with a good Loyalty Discount, I called Cogeco as soon as Epico was available in my area asking if I could switch to it at the advertised price of 145.00 for the X-Stream package (pick 30 channels and 360Mbps). 145.00 is what I was paying for 1 gig and My Mix 10 with the 4k Tivo and another HD receiver. I was told that I could not get the advertised price of 145.00 as it was for new customers and that I would have to pay almost 190.00, stubborn as I am I called back a couple days ago and asked them to cancel my cable TV. I was asked why and I told them that because I could not get Epico at the advertised price that I would cancel and check back in a year or two as a new customer to see what was going on. The lady, who was extremely nice, asked me to hold on for a minute, she came back offering me Epico Plus package (20 channels) at a price slightly higher than the advertised price for new customers. I answered with thanks but I would still like to cancel, once again she asked me to hold on. When she came back she now offered Epico X-Stream at the advertised price but only two receivers. I then explained that I would want everything or nothing, the 1 gig, the 30 channels and all three receivers. She put me on hold came back and offered everything but cheaper than the advertised price, I got the Epico X-Sream 1 Gig, 30 channels, 500 hours of cloud recording with 3 receivers for 145.00, 10 bucks less than the advertised price and the same as what I was paying for 10 channels and one Tivo recorder and another regular receiver. I then asked her to sign me up, she also stated that the deal would be good for 3 years.

Now my thoughts on the Epico TV, I love it, image quality looks the same, having all my apps together is sweet, going back to watch previously aired shows is awesome, the wifi analyzer app is great, it even tells you what wifi channels have the best signal, the voice search works well, the apps play 4k and the price is right. So far the only negative things I notice, unless I'm doing something wrong, is that all recordings, mine and my woman's from her receiver, show together in the recordings section even though we have separate users set up. Also I tried Plex and it couldn't play my movies that I have off of my NAS.

 

[weehaggis]

Had the new EPICO service for about 6 weeks now. Generally speaking I'm not too pleased with it.
My previous TiVo box was far superior in every way. I've been in contact with Technical Support numerous times.
First of all, the user interface and general layout of Home Page ,Guide and Recorded Shows is horrible.(why they wouldn't use a similar design
of EPG as TiVo, I don't know). The playback of recorded shows is very glitchy. It flashed Blue Screen every few minutes (no matter what show,what channel and what time).
Live TV is also an issue where it drops out and glitches. It does the same thing on all 3 EPICO boxes. The playback of Recorded shows has a few problems including,when I playback a show (that is in Progress) it doesn't go to the beginning,it goes to the Live position (I have the Tech's working on that for last 5 days). In general the Layout of the Home menu is very "amateurish" looking. It looks to me like Cogeco saw the fast moving move over to IPTV and jumped on the bandwagon by rolling out their EPICO service too fast ,before all the glitches have been ironed out. I forsee Firmware updates coming soon. By the way, the signal strength coming into the house is good. The modems are OK (although I've had to change it twice ....once to an Arris and then back to another Hitron). I'm also not happy with the WiFi (LAN works great but wifi drops out for no reason.........but,thats another story)

 

[ExDilbert]

My previous TiVo box was far superior in every way.

That's not surprising. TiVo is pretty much the gold standard and a successful product. Most cable boxes are so poorly designed and buggy that they would be laughed off the marketplace if they weren't the only option.

 

[Gcherry]

Had the new EPICO service for about 6 weeks now. Generally speaking I'm not too pleased with it.
My previous TiVo box was far superior in every way. I've been in contact with Technical Support numerous times.
First of all, the user interface and general layout of Home Page ,Guide and Recorded Shows is horrible.(why they wouldn't use a similar design
of EPG as TiVo, I don't know). The playback of recorded shows is very glitchy. It flashed Blue Screen every few minutes (no matter what show,what channel and what time).
Live TV is also an issue where it drops out and glitches. It does the same thing on all 3 EPICO boxes. The playback of Recorded shows has a few problems including,when I playback a show (that is in Progress) it doesn't go to the beginning,it goes to the Live position (I have the Tech's working on that for last 5 days). In general the Layout of the Home menu is very "amateurish" looking. It looks to me like Cogeco saw the fast moving move over to IPTV and jumped on the bandwagon by rolling out their EPICO service too fast ,before all the glitches have been ironed out. I forsee Firmware updates coming soon. By the way, the signal strength coming into the house is good. The modems are OK (although I've had to change it twice ....once to an Arris and then back to another Hitron). I'm also not happy with the WiFi (LAN works great but wifi drops out for no reason.........but,thats another story)

Which internet speed package do you have?
I have the 1gb internet and just received an offer to subscribe to Epico x-treme. We currently use a Fire stick with 3rd party streaming apps.

 

[Ouser]

Ive had the Epico service for about 3 months now. I switched from ShawDirect and so far I am very happy. The initial experience was not great - as the audio set up for a home theatre wasnt the best, the boxes they provide need to be plugged directly into the tv, then audio passthru to the surround sound decoder. This annoyed me as I was experiencing some audio lag. After some 'fiddling' I discovered that I can install the Epico apk on other AndroidTv devices. Now I have sideloaded (Play store says not available for all devices) the Epico apk on my Nvidia Shield boxes and have noticed a far superior connection, speed and quality. I now use the supplied boxes for TV in rooms that dont have 4K Tv's or surround sound I think the supplied Android boxes are not high spec- great for a kitchen setup, but not ideal for a HT setup. The sideloading process is simple, even for devices that say the app is not available.
Initial rating on install 4/10
Three Month Review 8.5/10

 

[waterug]

I've been receiving Epico now for about a month and already I'm on my second box. I have a number of issues that occurs when I first turn on the box. It takes a very long time to load: I get a nice chrome cast photo and then the screen goes dark, then what looks like a small gear appears on the middle of the screen and then finally the Epico logo appears. Then once that loads I get a notification to pair my remote to the TV. This happens almost every time I start up. Finally, everything appears which should have occurred a minute or so earlier. On my first box, the only way I could get the program to load was to unplug the power to the box and the re-plug. At least, I don't have to do that with this box. I don't have any of these problems with my second box on a TV in a bedroom.
I do have a question: Do you need to connect the ethernet cable to the modem? I haven't noticed anything different whether the cable is connected or not.

 

[57]

Usually these sorts of issues are related to the signal strength at the box, either the original signal to the home, or the WiFi signal if you're using WiFi. Try swapping your two boxes and see if the problem follows the box, or the location. If it's the latter, then you have a signal issue. If the former, then the box could have problems, although it's pretty rare to have problems with numerous boxes.

 

[waterug]

Usually these sorts of issues are related to the signal strength at the box, either the original signal to the home, or the WiFi signal if you're using WiFi. Try swapping your two boxes and see if the problem follows the box, or the location. If it's the latter, then you have a signal issue. If the former, then the box could have problems, although it's pretty rare to have problems with numerous boxes.

Thanks for quick reply, 57. I had a Cogeco tech in yesterday and he suggested a workaround was to unplug the TV for 30 seconds and then re-plug. It did work but he replaced the box and the remote (even giving me an extra remote) for good measure. All is good for now. That's the third box in the space of a month.

 

[Dr.Dave]

I get a nice chrome cast photo and then the screen goes dark, then what looks like a small gear appears on the middle of the screen and then finally the Epico logo appears. Then once that loads I get a notification to pair my remote to the TV. This happens almost every time I start up.

It sounds like the old box was losing its programming and reloading the firmware from the Cogeco servers every time. That's what the gear icon represents on Mediaroom boxes like Bell Fibe TV or Telus Optik TV. The firmware should remain intact even if the power is unplugged.

I assume the gear icon doesn't show up on this third box or the one in the bedroom?

 

[waterug]

It sounds like the old box was losing its programming and reloading the firmware from the Cogeco servers every time. That's what the gear icon represents on Mediaroom boxes like Bell Fibe TV or Telus Optik TV. The firmware should remain intact even if the power is unplugged.

I assume the gear icon doesn't show up on this third box or the one in the bedroom?

Actually it does, but only briefly. It happened when the tech was here and he says it happens on his box too.