Thread: Review: AT&T U-VERSE

Originally Posted by david in texas

Hey all,

I've been with Dish for 11 years now and for the most part been pleased. If they carried the MLB Network I might not even be thinking about leaving.....but alas.

My question is, I'm debating between U-Verse and DirectTV. ATT is telling me that I get HD on all TV's (not just the primary DVR box). But a rep I spoke with at DirectTV is telling me that it'll be SD on all the additional receivers.

Additionally Direct is telling me that ATT "piggybacks" off of their signal and sends it via Fiber to one's home and that said signal is 720 but with them (Direct) it's 1080i.

So needless to say I'm having a hard-time finding out the truth, so any assistance here would be great.

Thanks

You get HD on all boxes, now with that said it depends on your profile you will get either 3HD or 4HD which means you can have 3 or 4 different HD channels on 3 or 4 diffrerent boxes (or recording) at one time. Lets say your like me. I have 4 boxes and get 3 HD streams. So if everyone is watching a different HD show 1 of them has to go to SD because I am only allowed 3 streams. With that said in my exact location Uverse's picture quality on HD channels is not as good as Directv.

Thanks for the reply.

I am leaning towards UVerse, it's just hard to pull the trigger having been with Dish so long.

Originally Posted by david in texas

Thanks for the reply.

I am leaning towards UVerse, it's just hard to pull the trigger having been with Dish so long.

I had U-verse and hd pq was the worst out of Comcast,DISH, and DIRECTV. The hd stream thing get worse if you are recording hd while trying to watch hd on multiple tv's. Recording counts against the hd available.

Originally Posted by paja

I had U-verse and hd pq was the worst out of Comcast,DISH, and DIRECTV. The hd stream thing get worse if you are recording hd while trying to watch hd on multiple tv's. Recording counts against the hd available.

Well, I see that they have improved. Maybe a notch below direc. Just as good a picture as dish.
Plus they have made software upgrades. Now you can pause live tv, rec from all their boxes.

At least in my area they have made some nice strides.

Nice to see they are coming along.

Competition is good. We need the two big satellite companies to be pushed. At least a little bit.
Dont want any body to be fat cats.

Originally Posted by paja

I had U-verse and hd pq was the worst out of Comcast,DISH, and DIRECTV. The hd stream thing get worse if you are recording hd while trying to watch hd on multiple tv's. Recording counts against the hd available.

Everyone has their own view on quality -- so I'll offer mine. Last summer (just after the 3HD streams were activated in Houston) I had UVerse for 3 months. I overlapped with Directv at the beginning and with Dish at the end. I found the HD quality to be significantly lower than either Dish or Directv. Plus I had issues with sound dropping out and a lot of sound sync issues (particularly on movie channels).

I liked the idea of IPTV but I wasn't willing to take the quality hit. In the last 10 months I've had fewer problems with Dish (including rain fade) than I had during the 3 months of UVerse.

U-Verse has been available in my area for a few months now. I will probably never switch to it. I love my TV service from Dish and 20/4 soon to be 50/10 internet service from Comcast. The stream issue, PQ, and the slower internet are it's main issues. With 3 HDTV's the stream issue would become really annoying. It's so sad that AT&T didn't go Fiber to the home like Verizon's FiOS! If they did they would have one awesome service!

FiOS TV rocks! I'm a subscriber and it is hands-down better than U-Verse. Having said this, U-Verse is actually suitable for my parents or someone not needing blazing-fast Internet, multiple HD streams, or someone who notices the picture quality differences. I agree that AT&T made a mistake by not running fiber-to-the-home. Regardless, U-Verse TV now has 3.4 million subscribers and FiOS TV has 3.8 million.

My dream is that one day all of the cities will have their own community run fiber network. Like LUS Fiber in Lafayette, LA or Greenlight in Wilson, NC.


LUS Fiber | 100% Fiber | High Speed | Broadband | Internet | Video | Phone

Greenlight: Cable, Internet and Phone Service for Wilson, NC