# Verizon Fios OnDemand audio is crap!!



## Crappyguy

Last week my wife and I sat down to watch Sicario on Fios OnDemand. Pretty quickly I noticed that the audio sound pretty terrible. It sounded like there was some extremely heavy handed dynamic compression as well as this odd affect where as the dialog got quieter there was a 'wooshing" sound that got louder. Later in the film gun shots and explosions confirmed that there was definitely something wrong. At this point I was pretty much unable to concentrate on the movie so after investigating and trying the iTunes version the audio proved to be a night and day difference between the two. While OnDemand sounded awful the iTunes version sounded great and I was getting full 5.1 to my preamp.

Now before you jump to conclusions I checked the menu and confirmed "dynamic compression" was off on the STB. Live broadcasts all sound fine and when 5.1 is available there are no issues. Looking into other OnDemand movies (the free ones) I noticed that they were all fairly inconsistent. Starships Troopers (not sure how they weren't nominated for an Oscar) had dialog coming out of the surrounds and again generally sounded awful.

I have done some searches and contacted Verizon, but I'm not getting many answers. Has anyone seen this issue or aware of it?


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## username234

*Agree*

You are not insane. I have the same problem. I have found no resolution. I also compared Bridge of Spys (redbox) and Brige of Spys (ondemand). The video was fine.. the audio was ****. Exact same phenomenon, ambient noise growing louder and louder between dialog.. before being cut back down to normal levels when there is a speaking role or similar noise. Very annoying.


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## Crappyguy

username234 said:


> You are not insane. I have the same problem. I have found no resolution. I also compared Bridge of Spys (redbox) and Brige of Spys (ondemand). The video was fine.. the audio was ****. Exact same phenomenon, ambient noise growing louder and louder between dialog.. before being cut back down to normal levels when there is a speaking role or similar noise. Very annoying.


Thank you for the feedback. Much appreciated. Contacting Verizon they seem to have no clue what I'm talking about. You actually summed up the issue better than I did.

"ambient noise growing louder and louder between dialog.. before being cut back down to normal levels when there is a speaking role or similar noise."

I guess I will have to find my OnDemand movies elsewhere.


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## WildWolf

I am having the same issue but ONLY with movies that I purchase/ rent on fios on demand. It is VERY annoying. Everyone thinks I am nuts but it really bothers me. Does anyone have a solution? I contacted fios and the reset my router which did not fix anything.


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## jackienopay

WildWolf said:


> I am having the same issue but ONLY with movies that I purchase/ rent on fios on demand. It is VERY annoying. Everyone thinks I am nuts but it really bothers me. Does anyone have a solution? I contacted fios and the reset my router which did not fix anything.


Same issue here for on Demand movies both rented and purchased. The audio is terrible and anything going on in the surround channels, including left and right front, is immediately muted when there is audio from the center channel speaker. I called an complained and had a new box sent, had a tech from verizon come and agree with me that it is terrible, and tried many settings. 

It is impossible to rent or purchase movies if you have a surround sound system with verizon fios.


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## WildWolf

jackienopay said:


> Same issue here for on Demand movies both rented and purchased. The audio is terrible and anything going on in the surround channels, including left and right front, is immediately muted when there is audio from the center channel speaker. I called an complained and had a new box sent, had a tech from verizon come and agree with me that it is terrible, and tried many settings.
> 
> It is impossible to rent or purchase movies if you have a surround sound system with verizon fios.


Hard to believe Verizon will not fix these issues....


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## DarthErectus

Not hard to believe VZ won't fix the issues since VZ management doesn't really care about the FiOS side of their business. The only thing they are concerned regarding quality control issues is VZ wireless. That's why you no longer see any large scale build outs of the fiber network. And any expansion into new market like Boston you hear about isn't going to be true fiber infrastructure builds. It's going to be a hybrid 4g/5g delivery to premise platform in most cases


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## dougotte

I chanced upon your thread here. I've been posting the same complaint in the FiOS thread in the HD Programming forum here for a while. No one else responded, so I assume most people don't notice. My wife doesn't seem to notice it, but I find it very distracting. I think the company which provides their PPV content adds the limiting/compression for some reason. It will probably not be fixed if most people don't even notice it.


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## dougotte

They recycled Drag Me to Hell (2009) back to OD for Halloween. I'd never seen it all, but like Raimi's work, so we rented it. It's a very clever movie, by the way.

Anyway, it was probably an older master, and I noticed the sound was unsullied by egregious limiting. It probably didn't have the full dynamic range of an uncompressed blu-ray track, because I noticed the orchestral fortissimos were a bit limited. Overall, it sounded pretty good.

So, Verizon's content provider must have begun adding the limiting to titles in the last couple of years only, and not on an adhoc basis.


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## ironmikey12

I know this is an old thread, but I have had the same issue. It's like the Fios sound shifts to "tin can" mode for split second. I stream from amazon simply for this reason


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## FedUpWithFIOS

*The Bad Sound with Fios On Demand movies*

After 18 months of complaining (same issues everyone here has) about the bad sound with Verizon Fios On Demand movies, and 10 different techs at our home, countless phone conversations with tech experts, replacing my OMT box, my DVR box, my splitters, routers etc, FIOS FINALLY admitted that the problem is not with my wiring or equipment.
I've been telling them this for 18 months.
They now say it's a "BACK END" problem. Which means it's either the way they send the signal or the software they are using.
In any case, now that they know the problem is with them, they also said, they're not sure how to fix it.
I told them to contact Netflix or Amazon and have them show you how to transmit a signal that doesn't ruin your movies.


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## Irish Dad and Irish Son

When you rent movies from on demand the movies sound great for me but when you purchase a movie the audio is terrible


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