In my continuing effort to slim down our monthly bills, I've decided to investigate switching from Dish Network to FiOS TV. I already have FiOS internet, so the savings on a package deal seem enticing, and they seem to have beefed up their channel lineup significantly since I last looked.

The one concern I have is about their DVRs. At the time I signed on with Dish Network, their multi-room DVR was superior to other offerings from DirecTV and cable providers. Looking around, it seems like Verizon has a multi-room DVR now, but they don't guarantee any specific model, so it's hard for me to tell how good they would be compared to what I have.

It looks to me like you can either use Verizon's multi-room box, or you can get a cablecard from Verizon for $4/month and use a Tivo Premiere. They both seem to have advantages and disadvantages. What I really like about my Dish DVR is the fact that it can share the two tuners and all DVR recordings with multiple rooms via a simple coax cable (or with component cables if you want to run HD to the other TVs) with no need for any converter box on the additional TVs. You're limited to two tuners (thus two concurrent DVR recordings) visible on any number of TVs, but the benefit of having just one DVR box and no other set top boxes anywhere is appealingly simple and convenient. (You do need to use RF remotes on the remote TVs, but that's not much of an issue.)

It doesn't look like anyone else offers this sort of whole-home distribution setup, or at least I haven't seen anyone else doing it. If I go the TiVo route, it looks like I need a TiVO on each TV with a cablecard to view recordings in multiple rooms, and if I go with the Verizon multi-room DVR, it looks like I need DVR boxes on the other TVs (at $10 each per month) that talk to the multi-room DVR. Has anyone else solved this problem with some sort of custom home distribution / Slingbox / Sling catcher type setup? Is there another DVR option out there I should look into? Is anyone else on FiOS and can comment on their DVR offerings?