Home audio & video forum: AT&T's U-verse HDTV & Interenet Service -User experience?

I paid $50.00 for there basic hi-def system and that fee was taken off my 2 first bills FREE I then ordered there hi-def and VOOM package for only $15.00 extra per month, Then thru up a cheap outside antenna hooked it up to the hi-def box did a digital scan and walla 19 local digital channels pooped in 9 are in hi-def I have so many hi-def channels to choose that a d.v.r. is totally a waste of money also after you do a local digital scan all you local stations will go into the main menue for easy access under $60.00 per month not bad steweee

seen by younger people. He invented so much stuff & no stunt men. Also introduction to Chaplin should get college credit. Hey, even Three Stooges. And the 40s - Abbott & Costello.

Very educational & should be seen by many.

I looked at U-verse, I did get the u-verse high speed internet, I finial got rid of the 640k DSL.
I look at the video packages, but they weren't as good as what I'm getting from Dish. John

I can record a different HD channel while watching an HD channel on both of my HD TVs. I cant record two HD channels and watch two different channels on each box. It states this in the literature though. Thats not an issue just a service fact. If you want more, wait a few years.
I dont know what service this person was talking about. Uverse offers 18Mbps. I have no problems.
No provider runs fiber optic cable right up to a home residence, a business is another story. Many providers in many locations dont even have it run to the pole, so to speak. So if Uverse is not ready for primetime then no other provider is either.

I had DirecTV for 12 years, and we just moved to an apartment complex that doesn't allow satellite dishes, so we were left to choose between AT&T Uverse, or Comcast. After a lot of research, we decided to go with AT&T Uverse. I called the sales agent to sign up over a week before we were scheduled to move in, and she promised everything would be ready to go on move in day. It was not. We still did not have service a week and a half after we moved in, almost 3 weeks after sign up. So we called AT&T corporate, they stated that we were not even scheduled for installation. They set it up, and the soonest date was 3 more weeks later! I had explained that my husband had a heart attack and needed to work from home. His income was our only income, and he now has had no internet/phone for over a month! Their response shocked me, they stated that we could always cancel and go with Comcast. We should have, but didn't. We waited, only to rearrange our schedules AGAIN for the new install date only to be stood up with no call. I called asked for a manager, and waited on hold for over 45 min only to be told the manager refuses to speak with me. First time in my LIFE a manager has REFUSED to even talk to me!!! Rep said manager stated she couldn't do anything to help me, and then rep transferred me to a tech support who I waited another 45 min for. He answers, I explain situation, and he states sarcastically " Well now that Ive been sitting here on the phone for like 10 whole minutes just listening to you, I think I know the whole story already". I had been on MY cell using MY min. cause God knows I had no home phone, for 2 hours, and he complains for 10 min! Unbelievable! He tells me it's a wire problem and it will be 3 more weeks until install date, and I can cancel if I don't want to wait. We really didn't want to wait, especially after that horrible customer service, but Comcast was more money,less product.So we waited, and install date comes AGAIN, and once again, we are no showed. Called to speak with manager - DENIED AGAIN! They stated no install date was in the system at all this time, so I cancelled. I called Comcast, until I can get my beloved DirecTV back. AT&T has the WORST CUSTOMER SERVICE EVER!!!! If they treat their NEW customers this way, I can only imagine how bad it will get later on. I think they got too big too fast. What a dissappointment!

DirecTV installation was fantastic. It included a new outside dish satellite receiver that is far larger in size than the old one but not intrusive and blends well with our current house color.

The picture quality is virtually perfect. The installer worked for DirecTV and was not a subcontractor. He was articulate and knowledgable about his product. After an hour or so installing the new Dish itself outside, he spent another two hours on the interior installation including moving our (heavy) 32 inch non HDTV Sony to the bedroom. He made sure our non HDTV still worked with the DirecTV TIVO and that the new HDTV (Sony Bravia)worked correctly including the software updates.

He said four hours had been scheduled to make the installation but it only took three hours because the factory settings of the new HDTV were about the first he had ever seen that could not be improved upon.

It is nice to deal with honest and competent people, even if it more expensive.

He then made sure we could operate the new DVR with the remote as adeptly as the TIVO by first showing us how to operate it then nicely "forcing" us to do it ourselves.

For once, everything relative to a retail purchase went right.

I had trouble with this as well. Mine works as follows
- Make sure you set your TV to channel 3 using your original TV remote.
- Turn on the Uverse and make sure the system is working.
- Use your old TV remote (NOT the Uverse remote) to switch from TV to DVD mode
- Use your DVD remote (NOT the Uverse remote) to operate the DVD.
- Return the TV to "TV" mode afterwards.

If you can't get the Uverse to work with the Uverse remote, you've got a problem with your Uverse controller and need to disconnect it to use your DVD.

After four our five Uverse telephone trouble calls, and three house calls, we have finally had explained to us how to "boot" Uverse. When we've had problems, the reboot function seems to work. Don't know why they waited so long to explain it to us.

Recently I switched from Comcast to Uverse. The main reason was the price. 254 USD with Comcast and 182 USD with Uverse per month.

I read a lot of bad reviews about Uverse and woul like to a list a few of my own:

1 - The biggest issue is the technology behind Uverse. The converters are like Personal Computers. They are called Home PNA's and have IP adresses as well as Micorsoft CE operating system. Now think about the last time you re-booted your PC. How long did it take? I've never seen a PC that rebooted in sub second... If you live in an older subdivision, where power outages, even if it is for a second is common, you will miss at least 5 minutes of TV as soon as the power comes back on. Of course 5 minutes may not be important, unless you are watching the Summer Olympics and the power goes off right before 400 meter starts.
2 - The second biggest issue is the line coming into your house. It is copper. The line going into the AT&T box is fiber, but the distibution is done using copper. You can logon to your Home Gateway using the following link http://192.168.1.254/mdc and look at Detailed Statistics (password required is in the bottom of the Gateway). In my subdivision, I see a lot of Uncorrectable Blocks - meaning dirty reads due to copper coming into the house. I also see 1491 of DSL unavailable seconds since the last time I reset my statistics (2 days ago). This is a lot of downtime considering it is now year 2008.
3 - Finally, I find the picture quality of Uverse better then Comcast. Particularly CNN Headline. Robin Meade and Kristi Paul look so much better with a better definition on the TV. However, with Comcast set-tops, I was also seeing the time of the day. ATT set-tops does not have a clock and have the annoying bright blue light which wakes me up the nights when I forget to power-off the set-top. Considering I have 6 of these set-tops, it means 6 less clocks around my house...

Home networking:

If you have a home network and share a printer using an existing router, BE SURE THAT THE PRINTER WORKS! BEFORE the installation technician leaves.

OTHERWISE, you'll have to threaten to cancel your service to get free technical support. WHY PAY FOR SOMETHING THEY SCREWED UP? Their literature states you can share a printer, but their website does not have ANY information on HOW to do it. They want you to pay for that service. This is a dumb oversight.

Ask for a Tier 2 technician--they are the experienced group. The 2Wire "home gateway router" has firewall settings that must be changed to enable a shared printer. (Ask them to enable a second router, that worked for me.)

The firewall settings cannot be changed by the user, but must be changed by AT&T. As it is, I can't print directly from my laptop, but have to turn on my desktop and 'share' the printer. Nuisance.

TV service:

Sometimes the box is slow to respond to the remote. If you press too many buttons, the unit will freak out and blink for several minutes. The service sometimes does freeze for several minutes. This was true with digital cable too. There is less pixilation or distortion with U-verse.

The picture is better than my previous digital cable, so is the sound. My internet connection is the best I've seen, but speeds are dependent on how far your home is from their 'node'. The service is fiberoptic to the node, then copper to your home.

The smart remotes work well with our TV's, including on/off and volume control. Haven't been able to program the remote to operate our home theater system. .

You can only watch 1 HD show at a time. Further, if you program your DVR to record 4 shows overlapping the same time slot (or 1 HD show), your OTHER TV's won't work. We're limited to 1 HD plus 1 standard show recorded/viewed concurrently, or up to 4 standard shows recorded/viewed. In other words, if you have 5 or more TV's that are frequently on at the same time, only 4 will work. That's WITHOUT recording anything.

I've found that recording non-hd versions of my shows, off primetime, solves my bandwidth problems.

They are working on adding more 'tuner' functions (up to 8)simultaneously, plus being able to access DVR from other sets. Don't count on these features to be ready soon, or to work as sold.

Good news and Bad news. Good news is that it does indeed work, the picture is (most of the time) clear and mostly easy to use, and I can get a serviceperson out to the house when telephone support doesn't work (about once a month, so far).
Bad news:
- local installers aren't as proficient as they should be
- system is VERY picky. Unplugging the power cord requires the system to be "rebooted", which can take up to an hour, and doesn't always work the first time. Need to make sure power cord is on a surge protector!
- commercials are louder in volume than the shows
- telephone support is spotty, and not always correct. Often have had to call several times before I got a corrective action that worked
- image degrades and hangs up for 20-30 seconds, often several times an hour
- system will turn itself on unexpectedly
- installer promised that new remote controller would control DVD player as well as TV, which it did not. Telephone support wasted several hours trying to "reprogram" the remote. I now need three remotes to play DVDs.

ok comcast, stop trying to flood message boards. not only do i have uverse, i install it. there is no way a person has a dvr that "rarely" works, has a slow internet speed that he said as being "really slow", and being on the phone with tech support for an hour? thats true. they are horrible about time on the phone. BUT reprogramming the remote is a simple thing, the likelihood was, you coulnt do what they were asking of you to do. they cannot reprogram a remote from the office. so you made that up.
unplugging the boxes...First, why are you unplugging boxes? anyway, the boxes clearly dont take an hour to come back up. not even with the recent update for all room dvr.. does it take an hour for a tv to come back on... so that too is a flat out lie. its more like 5 minutes if you unplug a box from the power (again, why?)

even the rg doesnt take that long to reset itself.
the only way it takes an HOUR is if you did a complete RECOVERY which is MORE than simply unplugging a box. You have to set your mind to doing one and do the steps. THAT takes about 30 minutes.

But to say that The dvr only sometimes works, it stupid. That is not possible. it cannot Work sometimes and not others. that is like saying your Hard drive in your computer will let you right click and save a picture sometimes and others it wont!!


And if your speed is "really slow" on the net.. its not uverse because thats physically impossible for it to be slower than anyone else (but verison). The reason is, either you have 256k memory or (and this is more likely) YOU HAVE ADWARE, and it bombed your computer when you changed providers. CLEAN YOUR COMPUTER... and stop using your computer like an aol user, and learn how the thing works!

And for you picture quality people with high def... I CAN BET you that you are feeding your tv with an hdmi cable, or even worse a Coax or rca's between the tv and the box, Another thing is, the att box is set to 4:3 and not 720 or 1080. We, like all other people dont push 1080 anyhow, its 720.

I was doing a little research on U-verse as well, came across a ton of reviews, good and bad on uverseusers.com and then this site which slams uverse www.truthaboutuverse.com there are posts about a lot of the same things you are talking about.

I received the offer from AT&T and am thinking about switching from Charter in the Riverside area (which up til now has been my only cable option at my apt.) Are you still with Uverse? Are you happy you switched from Charter?

We may be getting dish network at our apts soon so I am trying to decide if I should wait until that is finalized or if I should make the switch.

I switched from Charter to Uverse a couple of months ago. Don't expect to see any savings, I didn't.

Cons:

- HD fans, the picture is NOT as good as Charter's HD. They use different 'flavors' of HD. Charter uses the latest, 1080P.

- You'll miss your cable menu, where you can search "Movies", etc.. Uverse menu is very rudimentary.

- Don't change to Uverse if you regularly use more than 3 TV's at once, or if you have more than 1 HD TV.

- Much longer time lag in response to remote control (10 to 30 seconds sometimes, which is an eternity!) Real nuisance when searching through the Guide.

- The DVR isn't always reliable. Sometimes it records "blank" shows. Sometimes playback has distorted audio. "Fast forward" doesn't always work. That makes zipping through ads harder.

- Box sometimes shuts down without warning. This frequently happens if you don't wait for it to respond to a button on the remote. PATIENCE is MANDATORY.

- No Weather Channel local "weather on the 8's".

- If you have more than one home computer, DON'T switch. Their wireless router is poorly supported.

Pros:

It DOES change channels from HD to regular TV faster. The DVR does hold more hours of programming.

After reading this, I can't believe I haven't switched to DirectTV yet.

There is a LOT more video on demand. If you have Netflix, this might not matter to you.