Thread: Review: AT&T U-VERSE

Scott - sounds like you want iO

Originally Posted by J3ff

Scott - sounds like you want iO

Don't give him any ideas! He keeps hooking me into all these new things!

Can't see any reason at all to get this service. I would have dropped Dish and Time Warner cable (for Internet) in a heartbeat if they had run fiber to the home and offered something competitive to what Verizon FIOS is offering (15 megs down, 2 up just for the basic internet package). The lack of hi-def picture quality and only one HD channel at a time is also a pretty poor offering (especially when all the networks love to stack all of the shows that appeal to me on the same night (Prison Break, 24, Heroes, etc). I look forward to laughing in the guys face when they start coming door to door trying to sell this poor excuse of an offering. They have been installing all the gear for this thing in my neighborhood for the last 2 months.

Scott:

Is caller ID available through the U-Verse like my VIP 622? What HD Channels does U-Verse have that Dishnetwork does not have?

Originally Posted by obermi

Scott:

Is caller ID available through the U-Verse like my VIP 622? What HD Channels does U-Verse have that Dishnetwork does not have?

No, at least not yet, there are rumors going around that soon AT&T will offer very low cost VOIP service and once that is on then caller ID will be displayed.

As far as HD channels UVERSE has which Dish Network does not have, here is the list...

Wealth TV HD
A&E HD
MHD
HBO HD West
Cinemax HD
Cinemax HD West
Showtime HD West
TMC HD
Starz HD West
My Local ABC, CBS, FOX and NBC

Originally Posted by tonyp56

Well, glad that you can get this Scott. It will never be here, at least no time in the next 10-15 years.

I don't even have DSL, my broadband, if you can call it that, is satellite (700Kbps down) at the moment, or I could get WiFi that is 256Kbps down/up. I'd be happy to get DSL, let alone U-Verse or anything close to it. I'm only about 1 mile from DSL availability, to make it even worse.

IMO, IPTV is a cool new advancement, nothing else. If you mean future as in the next 50 years, I might agree, but, any time soon, say before 2022, IPTV or movie downloads in general, will never reach 100% of general population. No broadband service in rural areas being the biggest hurdle. If you can't get at least 1.5Mbps download, downloading movies would be a daunting task. Not even counting HD movies.

DVD's, HD DVD's, etc. can get 100% coverage, all that they require is for consumers to go buy hardware, with IPTV, it requires broadband access.

If I were in your shoes I would go for the Wireless. Your ping rate on the Sats is horrible.

Originally Posted by Scott Greczkowski

Wealth TV HD
A&E HD
MHD

My cable company has these that you mentioned and they are not worth it right now in my opinion. I will take them if I can get them because they can only get better with time.

Any word on if U-Verse will offer channels from other countries as Dish/Echostar offer. My interest is in Europe (German, Polish, Italian,...). I'm quite interested in the new Sony Internet ready TVs too.

If they upped the bandwidth for HD, and offered some more HD content like the VOOM package that I've become addicted to, I'd get it in a heartbeat. I like the fact that it's a broadband service plus digital programming provider. As it is right now, Bellsouth absolutely reams me on charges for regular phone service+DSL, and then Dish Network manages to do the same with their pricing package (currently Silver+HBO). With U-Verse 400 package I could get way better programming (as far as getting all the premiums) and probably save about $60 a month from what I pay now.

Here are a few questions though:
Will downloads and/or uploads slow down my TV viewing experience?
Is this the service that Microsoft is planning to add to their Xbox 360 dashboard (just curious, even though I'd prefer an independent set-top box)?

AT&T just merged with Bellsouth, so my guess is that it should come to Florida by 2008-2009, unless there's some marketing blitz by MS to deliver IPTV to 360's nationwide.