The boxes are all the same, but make sure they include the 'new' remote. The original remote was well hated by the beta testers and ATT changed it out.
AT&T TV
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The boxes are all the same, but make sure they include the 'new' remote. The original remote was well hated by the beta testers and ATT changed it out.
I still have that stupid remote and the box. I was in their beta program and most of the recommendations I made were about the remote.
AT&T TV to Add Unlimited DVR and In-Home Streaming to Live TV Streaming Service, Raise Legacy Plan Prices
In early January, AT&T shutdown AT&T TV NOW to new customers, but added a new contract-free option to AT&T TV. Outside of pricing and a two-year contract, one of the biggest differences between the …
thestreamable.com
AT&T increasing prices for legacy DirecTV Now and AT&T TV Now plans by $10 per month - 9to5Mac
Earlier this year, AT&T announced that it would be shutting down its legacy AT&T TV Now streaming service (formerly known...
9to5mac.com
Per the article:AT&T increasing prices for legacy DirecTV Now and AT&T TV Now plans by $10 per month - 9to5Mac
Earlier this year, AT&T announced that it would be shutting down its legacy AT&T TV Now streaming service (formerly known...
What AT&T has essentially done here is bring the legacy AT&T TV Now pricing up to par with its modern AT&T TV plans. In fact, most AT&T TV Now customers — aside from very early adopters grandfathered into the "Go Big" package — are likely now better off making the switch.
Those now-grandfathered DirecTV Now packages were always just renamed DirecTV (satellite) packages missing a few odd channels here and there. AT&T TV uses the original names that have always been used on DirecTV.
Live a Little = Entertainment
Just Right = Choice
Go Big = Xtra
Gotta Have It = Ultimate
Interestingly, the $10/mo price increase doesn't affect Gotta Have It. It was already at $95/mo, the same as Ultimate costs on AT&T TV under the new no-contract option. But Go Big is getting the $10 increase, which brings it up to the same $95/mo price point.
AT&T seems to be phasing out Xtra. It's no longer available to new DirecTV customers nor is it available to AT&T TV no-contract subs. Only way to get it now as a new customer is if you take AT&T TV with a contract (which isn't the option that they're actively pushing now).
Anyone now paying $85/mo for Just Right or $95/mo for either Go Big or Gotta Have It may want to switch to AT&T TV no-contract because it offers a free year of HBO Max on both Choice ($85) and Ultimate ($95). However, you only get 20 hrs of cloud DVR on AT&T TV no-contract unless you pay an extra $10/mo to expand it to unlimited. I don't know how much cloud DVR is included with those legacy DirecTV Now plans.
The two things that keeps us from trying AT&T (we had Dish and Directv from 1995 until 2019, and since then we have had Youtube TV) is what we read about the lack of a good pause, REW, and FF with live TV, and the 90 day limit on DVR recordings. The way we watch TV is often to record a series and hold it, e.g until others hit rerun time, and then binge much later. 90 days just wouldn't work for us. If they change that to the 9 months of YTTV we'll give it a try. FWIW
I just switched to AT&T TV after 3+ years with YTTV in order to get my RSN for baseball season. The DVR is as terrible as advertised. On Roku, I can't pause live TV or rewind back into buffered content as I could with YTTV. On FireTV, I can pause live TV (I believe there's a 2-min buffer), but I can't rewind even 2 mins. from live. Also on FireTV, while replaying a recorded show, there's no small preview screen in RW/FF, so I can't tell where I am in the program. At least Roku controls are much more robust in this area, including 15 sec skip buttons on the remote.
The 90-day limit doesn't bother me, and I'm going to get by with just the free 20-hour DVR (if I don't watch something within two weeks, there's less than a 10% chance I'll ever watch it).
I've resigned myself for the next six months to record anything I watch (news programs, sporting events, prime time shows), even stuff I wouldn't normally bother recording just to give me greater control (especially so if I miss something because my attention was diverted — a big play or important news story — I can go back a few minutes). Of course, this means I'll need to cull my DVR library on a daily basis because there is no setting to auto-delete programs after a set time frame. Thankfully, it's pretty easy to go through the recorded list to delete stuff, and I just look at it as like one of my email accounts where I have to delete dozens of ads and junk emails every day. I'm also on annual plans for Peacock and Paramount+ so I don't have to worry about recording prime time shows on NBC and CBS.
In a bit of good news, I am getting $125 in credits and gift cards, free HBO for 12 months and NBA league pass, though I'm only on the month-to-month plan. And having 5.1 audio again for live TV is as nifty as I remember.
The 90-day limit doesn't bother me, and I'm going to get by with just the free 20-hour DVR (if I don't watch something within two weeks, there's less than a 10% chance I'll ever watch it).
I've resigned myself for the next six months to record anything I watch (news programs, sporting events, prime time shows), even stuff I wouldn't normally bother recording just to give me greater control (especially so if I miss something because my attention was diverted — a big play or important news story — I can go back a few minutes). Of course, this means I'll need to cull my DVR library on a daily basis because there is no setting to auto-delete programs after a set time frame. Thankfully, it's pretty easy to go through the recorded list to delete stuff, and I just look at it as like one of my email accounts where I have to delete dozens of ads and junk emails every day. I'm also on annual plans for Peacock and Paramount+ so I don't have to worry about recording prime time shows on NBC and CBS.
In a bit of good news, I am getting $125 in credits and gift cards, free HBO for 12 months and NBA league pass, though I'm only on the month-to-month plan. And having 5.1 audio again for live TV is as nifty as I remember.
The Streamable is offering $75 in Amazon gift cards: Get $75 Back on AT&T TV
And the other $50 is being offered as a credit by my credit card company. The HBO Max and NBA League Pass were part of the deal AT&T TV was offering for the Choice plan and above through their website.
The new AT&T TV is a slam dunk for New York sports fans
The service no longer requires a contract nor its own set-top box.
www.silive.com
If you have the AT&T TV box (which runs a custom version of Google's Android TV) and are subscribed to AT&T TV (not the old DirecTV Now/AT&T TV Now service, which stopped taking sign-ups a few months ago), then you can pause live TV on that device. I've read reports that you can pause up to 90 minutes, although I'm not certain that's the exact limit. But way longer than the 2 minutes or so that you're limited to in the AT&T TV app on other devices. And you can perform trick play (FF, rewind) within the live TV buffer on their box.
You can buy a new box from them for $120 (although they'll spread the cost out over time and add it to your monthly bill if you want). Or just get one on eBay for about half that.
AT&T actually did something right. I signed up for AT&T TV last month so I could get my RSN (I had been with YTTV for the previous 3 years). The subscription comes with free HBO for 12 months, but I already was paying for HBO Max directly through HBO Max. When I logged in for the first time using my AT&T TV credentials, it gave the option to link my existing account and auto-cancel my current subscription. I accepted and everything transferred over. No need to create a new watchlist and tweak settings and re-login on all my devices.
It seems like a little thing when I write it out like this, but my expectations are incredibly low when it comes to anything related to AT&T. I'm still of course dreading the inevitable cancellation.
It seems like a little thing when I write it out like this, but my expectations are incredibly low when it comes to anything related to AT&T. I'm still of course dreading the inevitable cancellation.
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My Gift Card subscription to HBO Max ran out last month, switched over to getting it from YTTV, same experience with linking to the original account, quite easy and only had to do it on the computer, I was dreading doing the user name and password on every Roku, but did not have to.
Also, if they were not doing the new movies at the same time as theaters I might of dropped it, next year they go to a 45 days after premiering at Theaters, that will still keep me a subscriber.
Well...I swore never to return to AT&T, but after 3 years with YTTV, I had to make the switch. Since losing "Bally Sports", I am down to Giant's and A's for baseball. I'm blacked out from Dodgers, Angels, Padres and DBacks due to MLB restrictions in Vegas. I tried ATT TV, but did not like the inability to rewind live TV. I read Nash Guy's post and purchased 4 ATT boxes on Ebay. Sure enough, it works as advertised. I also think having channel numbers will help my mom navigate the TV as well.
I seriously need to consider getting an AT&T TV box now. I had planned on AT&T TV being a temporary stop gap until Bally Sports created a standalone service and I could go back to YTTV. But now there's rumors that it'll be over $20 a month when it launches next year. So I may be with AT&T TV indefinitely, at least as long as they're the only way to get my RSN and are still cheaper than cable.
The lack of a live TV buffer is the hardest thing to get used to. So many times I'm watching a news program or sporting event and my attention waivers, and if I don't have it set to record then there's no way to go back. And with a 20-hour DVR I don't record nearly as much as I used to with YouTube TV. Although I still record the things I know I watch every day.
The lack of a live TV buffer is the hardest thing to get used to. So many times I'm watching a news program or sporting event and my attention waivers, and if I don't have it set to record then there's no way to go back. And with a 20-hour DVR I don't record nearly as much as I used to with YouTube TV. Although I still record the things I know I watch every day.
Just FYI, the second-generation AT&T TV box (model A21KW-500, made by Humax) was just submitted to the FCC for approval on June 25. (It's already been approved by the Bluetooth and WiFi standards bodies.) So it should be eligible for release here pretty soon, although who knows, it might not come out until AT&T TV gets spun off to the new, separate DIRECTV company that will run it. That spin-off will happen some time between now and year-end and could bring with it a name change of AT&T TV to something else (possibly DIRECTV STREAM).
This new box should be a fair amount snappier than the current model. Looks like it will support WiFi 6 (as do AT&T Fiber's current-gen gateways) and also hardware decoding for the new AV1 video codec. Should run Google's Android TV 10 (which the current-gen box just recently got updated to, BTW). Expect the remote to remain the same. Don't know much else.
As for RSNs returning to other streaming cable TV services like YTTV or Hulu Live, yeah, I don't see it happening unless Sinclair allows them to be sold as an optional "sports extra" add-on, or as part of an upper-tier channel package. But so far AT&T TV is the only one with multiple package tiers (and notably they're able to stick the RSNs in the second Choice tier, not in the cheapest Entertainment tier). If Sinclair does go through with launching their own standalone Bally Sports app for their RSNs, I tend to think that they would rather consumers go that route rather than subscribe as an optional add-on inside the YTTV app, where they don't fully control advertising or have the ability to offer lucrative sports betting.
I don't understand why the tier the channel is in would still be an issue when a lot of services that still carry Bally Sports RSNs charge an opt-in "RSN fee," including my local cable company. Even AT&T TV does, oddly, when you go on a contract deal (not the month-to-month like I have). It seems the price Bally Sports is charging the given service to carry the RSN channels would be the main sticking point.
It's not just about the carriage price for the RSNs, it's about how many paying customers that pay TV operator is bringing them. Consider the largest cable TV operator in the country, Comcast. Typically, they offer a Basic package that's pretty much just your locals. The next step up is a package that includes lots of cable channels too, including RSNs with the unavoidable RSN fee. Pretty sure it's the same situation with Charter.
Sinclair (and Fox before them) don't want operators to exclude their RSNs from the most popular channel packages. But because the price for those RSNs keeps going up, causing many non-sports-lovers to walk away from cable TV completely, the cable operators would like to make the RSNs completely optional (like HBO), or at least shove them up to their high-end tier. But the RSN owners are strongly opposed to such moves because they know it will mean they get far fewer subscribers, which in turn will mean they must charge more per subscriber. Which will in turn lead to yet fewer subscribers. Wash, rinse, repeat.
DirecTV and AT&T TV are kind of unusual in that they offer a well-rounded channel package (Entertainment) that has locals plus the most popular national cable channels (including major sports sources like the ESPN channels, FS1, NBCSN, TBS, and TNT) but NOT any RSNs. Not sure how they achieved that but they did. And whether AT&T breaks out an RSN fee separately or not, for their Choice and above packages that contain those channels, the customer is still paying for them, of course. The new simplified pricing for AT&T TV just bakes the cost of the RSNs in (which is the ethical thing to do as opposed to trying to hide the charge in fine print, separate from the advertised price as Comcast does).
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