AT&T Uverse first impressions

Steven Carter · **Posted:** Fri Aug 14, 2009 11:14 pm

Seems they've only started to enter RDU's market, so I thought I'd provide an early review. I'm not a telecom or IT expert, so this is from a typical end-user.

I recently moved from TWC to AT&T...6MB Internet, UVerse 200 with HD for 2 rooms, and Uverse Voice 250. After their 6 month reduced rate expires the monthly fee is around $144. This is about a 30% savings over what I was recently paying, (digipac 1000, 2-room HD DVR, standard Roadrunner) for roughly the same level of service.

Pros:
1) The DVR can hold 200+ hours of HD prgramming, and can record 4 shows at once (but only two can be HD at any one time)...TWC DVR only holds 40-ish hours of HD, but ours may be an older version. UVerse DVR content is accessible from any TV with an access box, as each box is networked to the DVR.

2) Video quality is superior to TWC--looks like all the HD programming in in 1080i, where TWC has a lot of HD in 720p.

3) Guide menus overall are better than TWC's. BUT you can't search for content by genre like you could with TWC, only by title/keyword.

4) You get free AT&T wifi access from places like McDonald's, Starbuck's etc.

Cons:
1)The system's residential gateway requires close proximity of a phone jack and coaxial jack, otherwise some creative line running needs to be done. Our house has a central access panel in the basement where all the telecom stuff enters, so it wasn't as painful as putting it in a room and having wires strung across the floor or along the baseboard...

2)The gateway also serves as a wireless router, so you don't have to use your own. BUT it's only 801.11b/g so if you want use /n you can, but you'll have to disable the wireless output and connect the n router from the ethernet ports on the back, like TWC. The gateway is fully configurable for your own security settings, WEP or WPA encryption, MAC filtering, SSID broadcast etc.

3) Viewing non-HD content can be problematic as it won't fill a 16:9 screen--no option to "stretch" or zoom an SD signal from the box, so you have to change your TV settings or deal with the vertical bars. If you change the TV settings so that SD signal fills the TV screen, the DVR menus are cropped. Haven't found a good solution for this, but ultimately with the size of the DVR and the number of HD channels the SD content could be minimal depending on how you use it.

I suspect customer service is about the same level of bad, but I've had no exposure to that so far.

So, if you're considering switching, I hope this helps. There are some trade-offs as noted above, but currently the cost savings, wifi access and image quality make it a good decision for me.

Anyone else have some experience with it?

ChrisSuich · **Posted:** Sat Aug 15, 2009 7:49 am

Funny you should post this yesterday as a guy at work posted a similar experience with U-Verse.

I have no personal experience with U-Verse, but here was his comments

Guy from work wrote:

I just switched to U-Verse (for everything) the other day. The install took a VERY long time (>4 hours), but part of that was that the "outside installer" was late, so the "inside installer" had to wait around for an hour. The inside installer was very knowledgeable and friendly, and they included one cat-5 in-wall w/keystone (~50 feet) and a good isobar power strip. The gateway is on a UPS battery, so you can have phone service for up to 17 hours if the power goes out.

It's about the same quality than TWC or Dish (which is not great - they all compress the signal a lot), but I have way more channels than I can ever watch and 12Mbit down / 1.5Mbit up internet for the same price I was paying for 3mbit DSL, Bellsouth/ATT phone, and Dish Network (all bundled from ATT). The benefit is I'm not paying Time Warner. I don't /think/ I'm paying more for the ability to watch 2 HD channels at once, but it might be included with the U450 TV service (that bundle included the $10 HD fee). I like that you can connect the set-top-boxes with ethernet or coax or phone lines (next year, wi-fi). As has been mentioned, the big draw was watching DVR from any TV in the house (and I can schedule it from the internet). I also missed having decent video-on-demand with satellite - a good number of the shows we would DVR are already stream-able on demand.

The only "problem" is that you can only watch or record 2 HD shows plus 2 STD shows at the same time (or 1 HD plus 3 STD I think), so if you have two people watching HDTV in different rooms of the house, and the DVR turns on to record a different HD show, it interrupts one of the watchers with a message allowing them to either cancel the DVR recording or "interrupt" the other TV watcher, or they have to watch one of the other shows. If you interrupt, the other TV watcher gets a similar message and has the same options. Interesting way to handle it I guess. The installer said that they are supposed to be increasing the bandwidth to the house "probably next year" to allow for 3 HD plus 3 STD /plus/ 24Mbit down +10Mbit up. It is still copper last-mile technology, so I'm not sure how well that will work. The installer also said that people who have above-ground telephone wiring in their neighborhood might have interference from some AM stations - especially a problem during football games in Chapel Hill when they boost the signal.

David Teague · **Posted:** Sat Aug 15, 2009 9:26 pm

I have and love it, I do not have thier phone service, and no HD for me, but compated to TW I am saving about 6 bucks and I have 100+ channels and DVR (I just had standard Service with 70ish channels.) The internet speed seems to be faster even though the down is slower, the up is faster and since I do update some websites and stuff from home so I od considerable uploading (I have 3mbs down 1.5 mbs up, TW was 6mbs down only 386up).

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AT&T Uverse first impressions

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