Thinking of switching from E*

[FredC]

Hello all,

My wife and I have been thinking about switching from E* to Uverse. She likes the idea of a whole house dvr, I just want to upgrade to hd.

After looking at everything, I can get the phone, internet and UVerse (the 350 package ?) with HD for a slight savings then if I upgrade my dish to hd. With UVerse I seem to get more channels then the dish 250 + HD package.

I know I will only be able to record 2 HD programs at a time, and I know that I will have less recording time compared to my 4 individual tuners

Other then that, what do you who have UVerse think about the service? Any major problems? How do you like your service?

ATT spent about 3 months working in the neighborhood, including installing all new trunk lines on the pole. Everything is new except the line to the house so I would think things will work well around here. Let me know your thoughts!

 

[cwbuckley]

I have had Uverse for a year the end of July. I cant really say that i have any problems. There are some people that have had problems, with the picture or other things. For my the picture quality is just fine. I like the large number of HD channels that uverse offers. I guess that the biggest disadvantage that i can see, is that you can only watch and recorder two HD channels at the same time. I like the fact that i can watch a recorded program on any STB. I dont believe that you can do that with Directv.

I hope that i have helped answer some of your question.

Chuck

 

[toto]

I've been without dish for not quiet 2 years (Diwrectv). I did talk my daughter and son-in-law into uverse. My daughter mentioned 2 positives on Uvers vs. Dish. Locals in heavy storms and the ability to hit the record button and then switch channels while in the record mode. They evidently were unimpressed with Dish's fancier DVR and longer recording time. They had no positive comments of Dish over ATT. They were very satisfied with Uverse. I'm changing in November or sooner.

 

[slatterie]

So what is lost from Dish vs. UVerse?

We are planning to move to a UVerse "friendly" area. We currently have Dish 722k with EHD. We have been happy with Dish (I dont miss Tivo anymore) but hubby can get a discount if we go to UVerse. I've been reading alot of things but still confused over what is lost by dropping Dish or gained with UVerse.

How much DVR space is there on Uverse? It seems like less than the 30HD/300SD than our 722. We have never maxed it out but without the extra EHD we probably would.

I am also fearful of going back to at&t and the 2Wire equipment. We had the dreaded Homezone for about 6 months and by the 3rd box replacement we were done.

 

[hwkn]

233 hours of SD and 65 hours of HD content on the dvr's that Uverse uses.

 

[clydesam]

I was suppose to have uverse install Saturday the 5th. Installer showed up an 1 1/2 hr late. Couldnt get a signal to my phone. Ask me if the outside guy had been here. Yes, he came Wednesday and called me at work said everything on the outside way fine. After checking again another outlet. Said he couldnt do nothing. He would call for an outside tech and someone else would come back after he had come out. Sometime between 3 and 4. Called salesman at att store. He said he would me back after he found out what was going on. He did and said it would be installed today between 4 and 6pm. 3pm get a call from someone asking for a repair . I told him it was suppose to be an install . Well said he would have to fine out whats going on and call me back. He never did. Then at about 3:40 someone called an asked for directions. Said he would be coming to install the service. Good I thought.Take him about 30 minutes. After about 30 minutes I get a call from thinking he is outside and ready to go to work,.He says they sent him on a repair to late in the day for an install. So call salesman again. I told him I was off Monday and no install I will cancel. Monday came and check online the appt time. Showed June 23. Called sales again He again called tech and then called me back and says he was working on it with a tech to make sure they install today. About 12pm I check again online change to June 9 between 1-3pm. Call salesman again. He tell me the same thing as before the tech department is still working on it. Finally at 5:35pm I had it call saleman , answering machine comes on. I leave a message that no show want to cancel call me back . Never called back. So I called the 800 and cancel the install and service. I told the csr what had happened. Said stay on the line and she had to find out what it was changed from today til Wed June 9, Comes back because the telephone had to ported and would take til then. Then I cancel . She tries to get me to stay for a cheaper price. No way , .. Then while I am finishing up the conversation a att guy drives up and I say to her let me see what they want. It was only the guy to fix our phone. Which I forgot to mention. Sunday my partner called and said att was at the door and he wasnt going to stay and deal with them. So I told him to go answer and see what they wanted. So he does and says their an outside tech working on the line. So he leaves and a little later comes back. So I called Randy again and He says their outside again. So I asked him to go outside and see if he can check the inside wiring to make sure it is ready for Monday. He did and tech was outside only. So after hour later Randy on his cell and says the home phone isnt working. So I figured they were still working on the line while it was down. Still no phone . This was why the guys was at the door to do the repair on home phone. So hung up with cancelation of uverse. So he fixes home phone and leaves. Thought about it later why would they have to wait til Wednesday for the phone to be ported. The order was placed almost 3 wks before and the reason I was waiting Monday because of their not doing the work Sat. So I have 1 mo left on my comcast internet special. Chat with lady online to add home phone. I get local and more for $24.95 and she extends my internet special for another year. Kept dish for television and went with dish america silver. So I wouldnt recommend anyone did get anything with att. Have and Iphone still under another year contract. May cancel that next yr. They dont know what they are doing. I think the problem is having separate tech for uverse and regular home service. They dont communicate .

 

[Islandguy43]

They dont know what they are doing. I think the problem is having separate tech for uverse and regular home service. They dont communicate .

After your problems, there is only one cure. A large bottle of Jack Daniels.

 

[toto]

My install was great includining peripherals. The picture quality is equal to OTA, the remote is logical, easy to understand. The channel layout is very intuitive. If you can handle 2HD and 2SD signals at a time, it blows sat away. The number of channels in HD is all but IFC for me. The speed of changing channels is unbelievable. PIP while scaning stations is nice Had Direct 2.5 years, Dish 11.5 years, and Direct 1.5 yrs

 

[Mike0616]

My install was great includining peripherals. The picture quality is equal to OTA, the remote is logical, easy to understand. The channel layout is very intuitive. If you can handle 2HD and 2SD signals at a time, it blows sat away. The number of channels in HD is all but IFC for me. The speed of changing channels is unbelievable. PIP while scaning stations is nice Had Direct 2.5 years, Dish 11.5 years, and Direct 1.5 yrs

Same here for me. My wife LOVES being able to watch the shows in any room and that it actually works. (We had tried the "beta" version of MRV and it had issues.) Since the 2 HD limit is being changed currently to allow 3 HD and 1 SD, that ought to take care of any qualms we have with it. (As an aside, the internet access is awesome as well. Had 10 MB with cable, went to 3 and its actually faster. ) Only problem I have with the Cisco equipment I have is that you have to point remotes at boxes, something I did not have to do with D*'s HR20s (had them set up as RF remotes) , but I am learning.

If you want to see how it actually is, go to your ATT store and check it out. That is what we did, and the brochures are like anyone else's, written by marketing types (aka the ill-informed.)

 

[volzjr]

I've had UV for about a year now, and have had very little trouble. Our install was fine... the guy was right on time, and did everything I asked of him. At first we had sporadic instances of audio stuttering and pixelization, but an e-mail to support and a couple of days later it was working fine, with no visit to the house needed. Since then no prob.
Since we've signed up, they've added on-screen caller ID (which we dearly missed from Dish) and they recently upgraded us to the 3HD/1SD profile, which makes life a little easier, although we frankly didn't bump into the limit much.
As for the smaller hard drive... I once had the hard drive die in my 722, Since then I don't keep anything on any HD that I need to keep forever (yes, even EHD's die... usually once you hear the clicking, it's too late :rant I have a DVD recording deck, and I dub anything I need to archive to a disc asap. I just record things I want to watch and if they get so old that they're rolling off the end to make room, oh well, I guess I didn't want to watch that one.
Overall we're very happy, Love the whole house DVR, no more rain fade (especially aggravating was rain fade on DVR'd programs... watch a whole program and find out the last 10 minutes aren't there ) and the VOD choices are quite numerous.
One thing I still miss from dish is the ability to sort the channels on the on-screen guide by 'all", "all-sub" and "all-HD". You can manually delete individual channels from appearing in the guide, but it's tedious and I've never had the patience to do them all, and I fear that if I ever had to re-boot the RG, I'd have to do it all over again.
The 2Wire RG has been trouble free and the internet is fantastic too. We "re-learned" to use the remotes the normal way pretty quickly, but if you gotta have it, they now offer optional RF remotes.
As with any system with millions of users, there have been some bad and even some "nightmare" installs, but they wouldn't have all these customers if the system & hardware didn't work for most. Bottom line is, unlike Dish, U-Verse requires no commitment whatsoever so you can try it for however long it takes to decide, yea or nay.

 

[toto]

while waiting on the third stream of HD, something on the system came as a shock to me. I'm hard of hearing and my wife enjoys close captioning almost as much as I. Uverse gives us closed captioning. 15 years of Satellite gave us closed captioning, except on all the premium channels and several others.

 

[gdarwin]

I know this thread is a couple of months old... Had Uverse installed last Saturday with their free 30 day promo. As a Dish customer, I'm not leaving Dish. The ATT TV box is a pain to control compare with the Dish DVR's we have now. Noticed dropouts in the TV HD programming. Watching on the 52 inch...

Love the 18meg Internet though. Also changed the landline to VOIP also.

 

[Mike0616]

I know this thread is a couple of months old... Had Uverse installed last Saturday with their free 30 day promo. As a Dish customer, I'm not leaving Dish. The ATT TV box is a pain to control compare with the Dish DVR's we have now. Noticed dropouts in the TV HD programming. Watching on the 52 inch...

Love the 18meg Internet though. Also changed the landline to VOIP also.

Sounds like something was done wrong in the install. No dropouts here and am in same area as you are.

As far as the DVR goes, the menus are different, but its way faster than what Diwrecked uses and after a couple of months using it, was as easy to use or more so than what I had from either D* or E*. My wife uses it more than she ever did the other 2, so maybe that is what is going on, ATT's software is written more for ease of use than shortcuts by tech types?

 

[jerryez]

I just got a book in the mail from UVerse and it looks to me that you have to get the u450 package to get any HD. None of the packages in the book list any HD for the U100, U200, U300 packages/ Is this correct?

 

[gdarwin]

There are HD channels in each package, but you have to pay a "Monthly HD Technology fee" to get them.

The HD premium tier which is $5.00 contains:
HDNet
MGM HD
NFL redzone
Palladia
SHORTS
Smithsonian
World Fishing.

 

[hwkn]

The HD premium tier has HDNet Movies not HDNet btw.[HDNet's available with most regular packages]

 

[Mike0616]

I just got a book in the mail from UVerse and it looks to me that you have to get the u450 package to get any HD. None of the packages in the book list any HD for the U100, U200, U300 packages/ Is this correct?

There are plenty of HD channels in each package, as long as you pay the "technology fee" (I think its 10 here) and IIRC, you get all the channels in the base package that are available in HD at that point.

As far as the HD offerings, U-verse offers more real HD channels than either Dish or Diwrecked, last real comparison I saw, only FIOS had one extra HD channel that ATT didn't. I am not really sure there are any HD channels offered that U-verse does not carry, although the one FIOS did carry that U-verse didn't (IIRC) was one that ATT didn't carry in SD, either.

 

[Mike0616]

There are HD channels in each package, but you have to pay a "Monthly HD Technology fee" to get them.

The HD premium tier which is $5.00 contains:
HDNet
MGM HD
NFL redzone
Palladia
SHORTS
Smithsonian
World Fishing.

NFL Redzone is available with most other packages as well. No need for the premium tier to get that one either.

 

[hwkn]

You do need the premium tier to get NFL Redzone[i have the u450 package and it doesn't come with the Redzone channel].

 

[scots]

HD is available with any of the packages as long as you pay the HD fee of $10 per month. The U450 package (which is the top package) includes HD without the additional $10 per month. The HD premium tier is an additional $5 per month, even with the U450 package.

I switched from Dish Network to U-verse about a year and a half ago, and have never regretted the switch. The DVR did seem a little confusing at first, but I think that was just because I was used to the Dish DVR. After using the U-verse DVR for about a month I got used to it, and have no problems at all with it now.