AT&T U-Verse Experiences?

GWC Community GWC Hive Mind
#1

So I’m in the process of cutting expenses around the house and office, and I keep getting stuff from AT&T about their new U-Verse phone/internet/TV service. Doing the math I’d save a bit over my current phone, DSL, DirecTV setup.

But the important question is: Does it suck?

My concerns:

[ul]
[li]It’s all IP-based. Does the phone service suck? I don’t use my landline a lot, but I do use it to record interviews. If it’s going to blip every time the DVR starts or such, that’s a problem.[/li][li]I’m a total DVR user interface bastard. Does the DVR suck? Is it reasonably easy to use? Do the menus move like molasses or glitch? Is the UI ugly?[/li][li]I depend financially on my internet service. Does it go down like a French whore? (Like my DSL seems to lately – another reason to consider a switch.)[/li][li]I’m stable with DirecTV and AT&T standard. Will this turn into a billing nightmare?[/li][/ul]
Anyway, it’d really help if any of you have direct experience and can share. And on the off chance you live in the Frisco, TX area and would be willing to show me the DVR, you’d, well, rock very hard indeed.

#2

Well, I would have loved to show you the DVR because I tried to go with all UVerse when we moved to Frisco. We couldn’t get enough signal for TV and the Internets so I had to pick Internets. We have Time Warner for cable…the DVR and UI suck. Slow UI and sometimes (this always happens when watching Chuck) when I am fast forwarding through commercials it just jumps to the end. I could probably call customer service but I haven’t had the time. Internet works fine though through AT&T.

So, I’m really of no help I guess…

If we stay in this house much longer I may switch back to Fios.

#3

I have had U-Verse internet & TV since late July. So far I am extremely pleased. I may be switching my phone from Verizon to the U-Verse since my contract is almost up. In short, I can’t tell you about the phone service.

The DVR is great! I generally do not have a problem bringing it up at all. The nice thing is I can record up to 4 things at the same time if I want to. The FF/RW functioning is faster on the initial setting than the Comcast DVR function. I rarely have to go to the second setting unless I need to go to near the end. It also backtracks a little if you’ve been FF/RW for a bit (like commercial breaks) so I don’t generally have to jockey it around trying to get it to start where I need it to. The DVR also allows you to resume play from where you left off, you can start over if you want as well. The only real “issue” I’ve run into with programming it is, if I want to set up a series recording, it can’t find it unless it’s running at that time on the network in question. For example, when i got it, I was unable to set up BSG or Lost on their first runs because they were in hiatus at the time.

I haven’t really had any problems with the DVR UI, I find it to be much more extensive than Comcast’s. If they have the same modem they use here, the remote has a direct button to the recordings UI. If you want more than that, post what specific things you’re looking for & I can tell you.

The internet I love! The only outage I have had that I can recall was when I was completely out of power. I imagine it’s because it runs off the phone lines which go down much less often than cable. I really liked being able to pay a little extra for a faster speed as well.

Overall, i am quite pleased with it, I have a friend in Texas (about 3 hours from you) who works for AT&T she says if the interwebbings go down, so does your phone. She also says there it does not blip when the DVR does it’s thing.

As for billing, I havne’t had any issues at all with billing. The advertised price, is the price. I have yet to be socked with hidden fees or mysterious changes in billing like I would get regularly with Comcast. You can also choose to go strictly with electronic billing if you want…well most offer that now anyway.

Any other questions feel free to ask!

#4

Sorry I only have in-direct experience but I have been reading up on the technology in preparation for when U-Verse expands beyond my closest area in San Jose, CA. At the time time I lived in the area I had a friend drop his Comcast service in favor of U-Verse and he will absolutely not go back. I don’t know you’re experience with Comcast but here in Nor-Cal Comcast service is all flavors of suck and U-Verse is heads and shoulders above all other TV providers in my book.

Basically U-Verse is a super-sized 15 mbps DSL line that is split 10/5 for cable/internet service. It is fiber to a node close to where you live and then copper the rest of the way which is way it’s faster than DSL but slower than FIOS. 10 mbps of bandwidth buys you up to 2 simultaneous HD streams to your house or virtually limitless SD streams which is one limitation if you are big into HD.

But in exchange for that you get big features like instant channel change (it’s IP-based) and networked DVR (watch DVR shows from your main DVR from any box in the house). The base station/DSL router is also a pretty sweet network router with built-in wifi so you can run your house network just from the U-Verse box. The TV wiring is still coax from the base station so you can still use the Coax wiring in your house. Overall it’s a very cool and cutting edge service.

It’s been out for a few years now and it’s had plenty of time to shake off the old bugs. I’ve seen it in action at my friends and can’t say anough good things about it (DVR is the coolest). The only con is that it’s not available in my area (Fremont, CA) and will sign up as soon as it’s here so if I were in your shoes Chuck I would signing up asap. Best of luck and hope the info helps.

#5

My best friend has U-Verse and the UI is pretty slick. Can’t speak for the phone or internet though. I remember having AT&T for all of 2 months before canceling because it was so damned slow. I was paying for 6M/sec download and never got above 250K/sec total. I would open multple downloads from different sites and the total download speed never got above 250K, so I know I wasn’t being limited by the speed of the websites from which I was downloading. Several of our production machines at work are running on Virtual Machines, and I end up needing to transfer large disk images (~2GB) to and from our datacenter, so when I can pay another $15-$20 a month for cable internet and get download speeds of between 1.5 and 2M/sec, and uploads from 100-400K/sec, it’s worth it.

#6

Just an update on my experience. I came home yesterday to find my U-Verse completely out! (I missed the Alien frak party! :() I called AT&T to see if something was up in my area, you know the drill. The guy I talked to was very helpful. He tried twice to reset the box & the second time informed me that it wasn’t coming back on his end either & it looked like it was something in the line. So he had to schedule a tech to come out & look at it. Now, my past experience with Comcast is I’d be lucky to get them out there by Monday or Tuesday next week. The tech is coming out TODAY between 4 & 9! HOLY FRAK! I wish I was able to get U-Verse LONG before now!

#7

all i can comment on is AT&T phone. its clear as a bell i used to have charter and alltell land lines. AT&T is perfect quality and it even hangs up when i turn off the phone (BTW CHATER SUCKS)

-someone

#8

As it turns out, someone who was in the junction box Thursday, disconnected my line for my U-Verse. As a daughter of a phone man I just had to laugh at that. I can’t tell you how many times my dad came home with stories of things just that dumb! (I’m sure Sean would attest to this as well!) I am still very pleased wioth my service. The tech that came out was friendly & courteous. He even put on those little booties they use ont heir feet in surgery when he came in my apartment! I can not tell you how much I with I had this service instead of Comcast before this!