I'm thinking of switching from Comcast Cable TV to AT&T U-Verse TV & am curious if any of you have any comments about this service.
Thanks.

_________________
CSFMB 2014 Nascar Pick 'em Champion

We don’t have a trillion-dollar debt because we haven’t taxed enough; we have a trillion-dollar debt because we spend too much. — Ronald Reagan

I have UVerse and we had Comcast at our last place. AT&T is offering a similar package as Comcast in terms of the Triple Play. We have our phone, TV and Internet running off a router that runs through a special type of cable that uses newer telephone cable.

The home phone is $30 (a lot cheaper than it was before with AT&T) and you can block calls, listen to voicemails online and set different settings online. The Internet is pretty comparable to AT&T's basic DSL. We doubled our speed for the same price as regular DSL. You can up your speed from AT&T for more money (I think it goes up to 16 mbps). Comcast is faster, but their cable Internet is $50 a month after the introductory rate. Honestly, I'm not sure that the average user actually utilizes all that speed. A lot of times the server you are connecting to will limit your speed.

The TV has a lot of features similar to Comcast digital cable or satellite. The U100 package for $50 a month is similar to basic cable, but with a box. If you want a DVR you have to get a U200 package (It's $64 a month for this package, plus $7 rental fee for the DVR). If you add a third TV you add $7. The 4th TV is free. The U300 and U400 packages have movie packages for more money.

The TV picture is quality and there are a lot of excellent features. There is picture-in-picture channel scrolling, which means you can browse all your channels without switching the channel you are on. You can pause, rewind and fast forward live TV if you have a DVR on that TV. You can set your DVR to record all sorts of programs and watch the recordings in different rooms of the house. You can set your DVR from the Internet in case you're not home.

The downside would be that AT&T wants to nickle and dime you to death. They will charge for every little feature that they can. For example with the U100 you don't get Comcast Sportsnet (add $5 a month). So you're at $55 for the most basic package on 2 TVs. If you want to switch to a lower service they charge $55 for a guy to come out to change the box at your house. The OnDemand lineup is pretty weak. They mostly just want you to pour your money into their pockets by paying big money for pay-per-view movies.

The good part is that AT&T is giving customers rebates for signing up. You get a $200 Visa check card for being a first-time customer with the triple play. There are also other deals, but of course they want to snag you. One thing to note too is that you can cancel at any time and there are no huge cancellation fees like satellite (there may some fees though that I don't know about). So there is no commitment, but they could raise the price on you at any time.

I think it's a quality service and I would recommend it, especially the phone and Internet (you can't beat that for $60 a month plus tax). The TV is somewhat expensive, but has no long-term commitment. I guess it would depend on what a person's needs are. If they want to have 6 TVs with cable I wouldn't recommend it. If you have heavy TV use (2 or 3 HDTVs on at a time) and heavy Internet use (multiple people hogging serious bandwith) in the house then I wouldn't recommend it. So I hope that helps.

_________________
To the Jews who had believed him, Jesus said, “If you hold to my teaching, you are really my disciples. Then you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.”

Mini Ditka,

Thanks for the detailed review. Currently I have 11 TV's connected to cable straight from the wall with no cable box, but Comcast channels 30 & up are now encrypted so they can only be viewed if you have a Comcast box on each TV. I can get the box from Comcast for each TV, but I figured I might as well evaluate my set up.
We got rid of our home phone 6 Months ago so I don't really care if I have a home phone or not, but if it comes with the package so be it. I never considered the bandwidth issue with internet based TV, but it might be an issue in my house where we sometimes have multiple TV's & Laptops on at the same time.

Thanks again for the info.

_________________
CSFMB 2014 Nascar Pick 'em Champion

We don’t have a trillion-dollar debt because we haven’t taxed enough; we have a trillion-dollar debt because we spend too much. — Ronald Reagan

You have 11 TVs?

I got U-Verse hooked up last week. I used to have 5 TVs with 3 DVRs on DirecTV. WHAT DO YOU THINK OF THAT MAC!?!?!

However, I just hooked up 4 with U-Verse. You can only pause live TV on the one TV that you have a DVR on which kind of sucks if you are used to doing it pretty much anytime you want.

Also, you can record 4 things at once. However, they are 4 standard definition shows. You can only record 2 things in HD at the same time. Also, that goes for watching Live TV as well. If people on 2 different TVs are watching a show in HD, the 3rd TV is out of luck.

Another thing, and this can be good or bad, you cannot access this particular site on any computer or phone that is on your Uverse wireless network (without jumping through some hoops and sometimes not even then).

But, the picture quality is good and it's reasonably priced. Also, you can get the NFL RedZone channel for $5/month as compared to paying DirecTV about $450 to have access to it.

_________________
You know me like that.

I didn't realize Kenneth and Scorehead were heavy TV consumers. 11 TVs is a lot. It's hard to believe that all the channels above 30 require a digital box (that probably means you get FOX news but nothing else). I think my grandparents have 6 TVs hooked up to Comcast and I've always considered that a lot (only 1 digital). But it all depends on how many people you have in the house. You could always just get converter boxes and antennas for the TVs that aren't on UVerse. Since they charge a fee for renting the boxes maybe you would only get 5 or 6 boxes.

The Internet is cheap compared to Comcast and they have tiered pricing if you need more bandwidth. You don't have to get phone or DSL on UVerse. I think they might charge you a little more if you were to get DSL without phone or TV.

The thing to remember with UVerse is that it is like a pipe of bandwidth coming into your house. If you are hogging bandwidth with multiple HDTVs on at the same time and 3 or 4 people online downloading stuff you might notice it.

_________________
To the Jews who had believed him, Jesus said, “If you hold to my teaching, you are really my disciples. Then you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.”

has anyone here made the switch from Directv to UVerse? In light of the Versus debacle I'm thinking of making the switch.

if you have, is there any difference in HD picture quality? is it better, worse, the same?

Also, I took a look at the lineup and it looks like there are more HD channels available on Uverse as opposed to Directv. Is that true?

If you are recording 2 shows in HD can you watch a 3rd show in HD? I can't do this on Directv, but was wondering if it was possible on Uverse.


And lastly, my brother has Uverse and he says that the SD picture is almost as good as the HD picture. I find that hard to believe. On my 52" Sony, I can barely watch directv SD because the picture is so awful.

_________________

From what I understand you get a total of 4 TV streams per house and 1 DVR. I think you can only record 2 HD programs at once and I'm not sure if you can be watching HD if you are recording two of them. You can record 4 SD streams at once. I think 4 TVs is all the service can support. The DVR only holds 33 hours of HD programming, so I don't know how much you plan to use.

Check out this link:
http://www.broadbandreports.com/forum/r ... ght-for-me

_________________
To the Jews who had believed him, Jesus said, “If you hold to my teaching, you are really my disciples. Then you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.”

How can this not be the best deal in sports?

Watching a little Giants/Eagles while it's Bears commercial.