Thread: Just switched to Uverse.

Well, economic reasons and curiosity finally convinced us to switch to uverse and ditch Dish. They gave us a credit for the termination fee dish charged. I highly recommend telling them you have the full 18 months left on your contract if you switch. You will get close to $200 from them. So, what do we think of Uverse? That's a complex answer....

The internet is awesome! After years of dsl with it's rated vs. guaranteed speed crap, getting ACTUAL speeds of 6mb down and 1 up is a HUGE improvement. And...it costs less than our dsl did!

The phone is ok. I expected clearer voice with digital, but it's probabaly a little worse than pots.

The sd picture is beautiful. Dish was appalling to watch, damned near unwatchable most nights. It was so bad that I rarely watched any sd programming on our HDTV.

So how about the HD? Well.......this is where complex comes into the picture.....When all the stars align you see a picture that is showroom beautiful....FAR better than Dish. It's those moments that show you the potential of this service. Unfortunately, this is not consistent. In fact sometimes the picture looks noticeably worse than Dish, much softer with more artifacting. I also think there is a problem with the box decompressing the signal quickly....many users report a pulsing or shifting of their hd signal. If you look real closely, it's like a camera going in and out of focus. It's obvious that ATT uses a worse mpeg4 compression than Dish and that causes much of the problems. It's important to note that these problems are not always there. And when they are not....well, the picture is amazing!

The DVR is extremely basic. I miss my 622. We can watch any recorded show on any tv, but can only record on the main tv. LAME. Getting to the dvr menu requires going thru the main menu and is a little more difficult than just pushing DVR on the dish remote.

VOD---well any HD VOD will be movies only and will cost you. No big deal....dish's VOD was, well, LAUGHABLE. All of the premium channels have a plethora of movies and series available on vod. This is a featue I am loving.

All in all, the service is good. I think that as hardware and software continues to improve the hd will start showing it's true potential. I have far more hd channels than with Dish. Far more channel period than dish, for less money.

Appreciate the review Firebird. I am considering the jump myself. Right now Uverse has the 200 dollar promotional, and a 30 day money back guarantee

I am still delaying since Dish FINALLY announced some new HD on Wednesday

I never had the issue you have with SD on Dish.

What surprised me is you indicate that the Uverse DVR is lacking. I thought you could view any recorded program from any UVerse receiver? You indicate that doesn't work so well?

Thanks again for your insights

I had the same experience when I dumped DISH for U=verse. Not much difference in the hd pq, but the difference in the sd pq was like night and day. DISH sd is almost unwatchable. Also, with the incentives, I'm paying 162 a month with the everything tv package, with hd , upgraded internet, and phone. Also got 140 cash back when I signed up. With DISH I was paying 137 a month just for tv. Since I got U-verse back in Oct 08, they have added many hd stations (another batch is about to light up) and my hd pq has gotten signifigantly better in the past few weeks. The seem to be aggressive upgrading their product. I am very satisfied.

Installers were right on time. House has coax and Cat-5 to every room, so we located the hub in the utility room where all the cables run from. Had installers hook up both cables in three rooms. In and out in 3 hours. PQ looks excellent, although I haven't spent much time comparing to DirecTV.

I have zero complaints with DirecTV, especially with all the deals they kept giving me out of their retention department. Had DirecTV since '96 and account is on hold until we sell our house in CO and buy one here in OH. Bought a cheapie house to get by and decided to try U-Verse. Got the 450 package ($109), with elite internet ($35), and with two STB's ($7). Total of $151/mo. was discounted to $131/mo. for 6 months with another $275 in rebates! DVR is the newer Motorola VIP1225 with the larger hard drive. Installers also threw in extras like a power strip, a Netgear 8-port desktop switch, and all kinds of extra cables.

With no commitment, how could I go wrong with this package?

Before this, they had the 250$ promotion.
I had U-Verse when it first came out here in Reno, the whole triple play, they gave me like 100$ and plus 2 months free no charge with all the channels.
It was cool of them.
However after 4 months I cancelled, since I didn't want to pay for 2 tv services at the same time.
I am highly considering moving from DTV to Uverse again, but I'd miss the DTV HD-DVR, its far better than U-Verse, and the response time on the DTV receivers is by far better than U-Verse.
I still have U-Verse Internet, and it has not been disappointing me since I came from Cable Internet.
Overall I'd like to get AT&T for TV, but NFL ST will keep me away from them for a while.
Plus all my locals with U-Verse would be in HD.
Right now I do not get PBS/CW in HD yet...still waiting dammmit.

BTW, with U-Verse, I even got the 2 Wire router/Home Entertainment modem, its amazing, its big, but its awesome, works like a charm and its wireless too, so my Iphone benefits from it too.
Never had any problems with wireless.

Also I do want to note that the U-Verse channel switching is blazing fast, its seamless, that means you don't even see a black screen when you switch channels, I was really happy with the service quality I had with U-Verse.
If I need to, I may end up cancelling DTV.

Well I just ordered UVERSE. To be installed March 21. We will see how it goes, and I will get an opportunity to give my view

UVERSE's SD channels have always looked great, that was one of the best things about the service to me.

The big limit that I ran into was the 2 HD stream limit in your house at a time plus that was added to the poor HD video quality. However with that said you should have seen what the HD quality looked like when UVERSE first started. While the HD now is not as good as Dish or DirecTV it is however much better then when they first started the service.

Originally Posted by Scott Greczkowski

UVERSE's SD channels have always looked great, that was one of the best things about the service to me.

The big limit that I ran into was the 2 HD stream limit in your house at a time plus that was added to the poor HD video quality. However with that said you should have seen what the HD quality looked like when UVERSE first started. While the HD now is not as good as Dish or DirecTV it is however much better then when they first started the service.

I will soon be able to compare UVERSE's HD with Dish. Like you Scott, I am not too thrilled about the 2 HD stream limit either