Thread: Review: AT&T U-VERSE

Originally Posted by ticket

this is from uverseusers.com site

Picture Quality-Bitrate-Compression

UverseUsers.com - Home

Ok, ran a few things and still crunching it all in my head. But I've become a sort of videophile lately and have run a few things concerning HD quality.

First off U-Verse, from what I've been told, runs H.264 (AVC) for it's compression standard. I pulled a few bitrates from BD-ROM info I had culled from the net to draw a comparison.

The top overall quality encoded movies in BD-ROM using AVC are:

X-Men: The Last Stand - 27.5 Mb/s
The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen - 23.4 Mb/s
The Descent - 28.9 Mb/s
Eight Below - 23.3 Mb/s

These are all encoded in 1080p True HD with PCM 5.1 or DTS-HD. They are considered near flawless in terms of quality.

I finally found a decent argument for the bitrate differences. 720p uncompressed HD clocks in at roughly 1.3Gb/s while 1080p is roughly 2.98Gb/s.

Assuming a fairly even ratio across the compression you're left with roughly 44% the size.

That leaves a 720p image in high quality HD with those films listed above in a range of 10.2 to 12.7 Mb/s. If you want to go with 1080i the bitrate is half of 1080p so you're left with 11.6 to 14.4Mb/s.

Currently AT&T, I believe, encodes their video in HD to be under 10Mb/s



From what I gather if they switched to VC-1 they'd have reference level picture quality. As is they're pretty darn high still. And since VC-1 is Microsoft's codec and MS is making AT&T's IPTV software, well, here's to hope.

I can't get the service yet so I have no clue how the real world application of picture quality is but it gives me hope that it'll be as good as I hope.


Feel free to discuss and point out holes, I look forward to it.

Doesn't AVCHD have a much more efficient compression rate, as it isn't lineal? I thought you could reduce Mbs by 1/2 to 2/3 with comparable results to MPEG2. If memory serves the highest on AVCHD is about 9 to 17Mbs on a consumer 1920/1080i video camera and Sat/telephone efficiency was at least as good, but probably better.

I just placed my AT&T U-Verse order (tv, phone, internet) yesterday and I can't wait until they install it on Wednesday!

Did I mention the account U-Verse page is the crappiest billing page ever?>
Slow/stupid and just sad.

I have a billing question. On my Time Warner Cable bill I have taxes and fees that include: monthly Receiver/Remote fee, Franchise Fee, 2 separate sales taxes, and a FCC User Fee adding up to an extra 15$ a month. I don't want to switch to U-Verse if I'm gonna end up paying a lot more per month because I didn't read the fine print.

Does anyone have a copy of their billing statement I can look at? Just so I know what to expect? Preferably one that just has the TV (U200) and Internet, cause that's what I want to get, but anyone who can help please do.

Thank you!

Oh yeah, and please black out any sensitive information concerning your account... or better yet just post the fees etc. That way no one can steal your identity. I didn't think of that.

Originally Posted by juljen

Oh yeah, and please black out any sensitive information concerning your account... or better yet just post the fees etc. That way no one can steal your identity. I didn't think of that.

Below are the taxes and surcharges on my bill.

Surcharges
Description Amount
16. IL Local Video Service Franchise Fee 5.09
17. IL Local Video Facilities Fee 1.02
Total Surcharges 6.11

There should be some updates to this post. Has nothing much changed in the last 2 years with this service? I would hope they have improved it in some ways. Anyone know?

I've had it for about 2 months. My quick review:

The Good:
- Nice channel selection
- Internet and TV service has been stable
- Price is reasonable
- Two HD streams, up to 4 total streams
- Picture quality on broadcast TV is good (to me, anyway)
- Set-top box is small and quiet


The Bad:
- DVR isn't as nice as Tivo or Dish 622:
- 30 Second 'slide' instead of real skip
- No 'wishlists' recordings
- No ability to limit number of episodes to keep
- Fast Forward is either too slow or too fast, and the 'skip back' is too long
- Only 2 HD streams (only 1 TV for me, so no big reduction from what I had on Dish - but still a limitation)
- VOD quality is really bad. Lots of interlacing showing up when watching SD content. My Roku Netflix box is infinitely superior to UVerse VOD.
- Remote ergonomics is bad. I still press the wrong button

Dish 622 is better, but I'll be sticking with UVerse for now.

I would love to get Uverse. They have been available '200 yards down the road' for years now. I agree that their channel selection is great and their costs are better than Cablevision. I have lost patience that they will go the final 200 yards. I will dig-in with Cablevision and complement it with OTA for the next two years.