Our friends at UVERSEUSERS.COM have featured our review today on their homepage.
http://www.uverseusers.com/
Thanks to UVADMIN (whoever you are)
http://www.uverseusers.com/
Thanks to UVADMIN (whoever you are)
Review: AT&T U-VERSE
- Thread starter Scott Greczkowski
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Our friends at UVERSEUSERS.COM have featured our review today on their homepage.
http://www.uverseusers.com/
Thanks to UVADMIN (whoever you are)
I saw that earlier. He doesn't agree with you but at least he's linking the review from the homepage.
I don't think he like that I said people should not be paying for it. And to be fair I am NOT paying for it as you get your first 2 months for free.
But one thing to take into account here in Connecticut this service is really in beta compaired to the San Antonio market which has been online for a long time.
I was told in an email today that the reason for the lack of VOD and movies was because they rushed to get CT online before the end of they year, portions of the service were not ready to go online for this area.
I got to say that I do believe this explanation.
But one thing to take into account here in Connecticut this service is really in beta compaired to the San Antonio market which has been online for a long time.
I was told in an email today that the reason for the lack of VOD and movies was because they rushed to get CT online before the end of they year, portions of the service were not ready to go online for this area.
I got to say that I do believe this explanation.
All of the U-verse channel lineups can be found here:
http://uverse.att.com
Click on shop, and you will see a link to the lineups on the right side
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That I dont know, I may ride out my 2 months, however if improvements are made I may stick around.
I have said this before and I will say it again, I do believe that IPTV is the future of television.
I have said this before and I will say it again, I do believe that IPTV is the future of television.
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.
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.
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this is from uverseusers.com site
Picture Quality-Bitrate-Compression
http://www.uverseusers.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=394
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.
Picture Quality-Bitrate-Compression
http://www.uverseusers.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=394
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.
Yup that goes with the information I was told that UVERSE HD was around 10MB/s
I have the equipment to test the Dish Network signal and can tell you that Food HD is between 12mb/s - 14mb/s
On Dish Food HD is (I believe) 1440 x 1080i, however I have no way of telling what the resolution is of U Verse and its version of Food HD.
I have the equipment to test the Dish Network signal and can tell you that Food HD is between 12mb/s - 14mb/s
On Dish Food HD is (I believe) 1440 x 1080i, however I have no way of telling what the resolution is of U Verse and its version of Food HD.
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.
Caller ID
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?
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
If I were in your shoes I would go for the Wireless. Your ping rate on the Sats is horrible.
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.
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.
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