Switching to U-verse

[TPK]

I am switching to AT&T U-verse as well...   I will log my impressions in this thread...

I live in Bayside (Its part of the North Shore, Nicolet school district, just south of Mequon), and I figured that it wouldn't be available here until the summer...  Imagine my surprise when I checked the web-site yesterday (Ive been checking it every few days or so) and I found that my address was available...

So I called the 800 number (it was about 8:00 at night) expecting to get a busy signal or a call back tomorrow message but instead a rep answered...  He was based out of Texas

The rep seemed somewhat knowledgable and friendly, although it was difficult (for me anyway) to figure out based on our conversation exactly how the services broke down and how much one thing cost over the other...  So I visited the website while I was on the phone with him to help me figure it out...  So now I think I have an understanding of what the costs are and what the promotions are...  

I decided to go with the U-400 plus package (for now) which costs $119 a month...  This includes a DVR and 2 extra set top boxes, which should work out okay for me...  I also opted to go with 2 upgrades that cost extra...

The first upgrade is for the HD package (which is a no-brianer)..  This costs an extra $10 a month extra

The second upgrade is to go to the 'elite' internet service, which gives you 6Mbps down instead of 3Mbps down....  This costs yet another $10 a month extra..

All of their internet services give you 1Mbps upstream...   I am too used to road-runner right now, which I have been (for the most part) happy with, which has given me a consistent 5Mbps down, with 380Kbps upstream..  The upstream part is the part I am not happy with....  I am a computer consultant and I do a lot of work from home, which means I am remoting alot to get my work done...  The 384Kbps upspeed makes this kind of work a little bit pokey, and Im sure that the increase to 1Mbps upstream will be more noticable than the increase to 6Mbps downstream...  I will do the appropriate testing (of course) once I get the service, and I will let you know if they truly deliver on their promised internet speeds.

Anyhow, the total monthly bill will come to $139 a month

This is a little less expensive than my current services from TWC (but not that much really).  My current services with TWC  include 1 HD-DVR box and 1 HD non-dvr box, The digipic package that includes 2 premium services (I chose Showtime and HBO since they are the 2 in HD), and the HD package, and Road Runner internet....

I still have phone through AT&T, which curiously is not discounted or bundled with the u-verse package in any way)..

Now the promotion for the U-400 package is that I get the base TV services for the first 2 months free...  However internet services are not free for those first 2 months....   So I still have to pay $25 a month for the base internet service and another $10 for the 'elite' upgrade, so the 'free' promotion period will still cost $35 a month...  The HD package upgrade is offered free for the first 2 months along with the base U-verse package...   Of course after the first 2 months, the cost will rise to $139 a month...

From what I understand, installation will be free, and I hope they don't try to slip in some extra charges for 'internal' wiring or stuff of that nature when they get here like the cable company tried to do...  I guess we will have to see what happens when they get here...  

Anyhow, I mentioned  to the rep that my house was going to be a very difficult install, since my house does not have a basement, and is very difficult to wire...  I told him that the installation was most likely going to take all day, and they should get here as early as possible...  I told the rep that if the installers expect to be in and out of my house within an hour so they can install 50 other customers that day, that it wouldn't work...  He said that he noted that on my record...  I hope they heed my warnings, or its going to be a very stressful day for both me and them...

I also told him that, knowing the service is new, I wouldn't mind if they sent a lot of trainees to my installation...

Then I asked the rep a technical question about weather or not the internet service blocks incoming TCP ports...  He didn't know the answer to that (I didn't expect him to really), but he said I can call tech support and ask them...

He then asked me if I had a dog, so I told him I had a golden retriever... I figure that if your going to be afraid of a golden retreiver, you probably shouldn't be in a job which requires you to visit other people's homes...  But I digress...

Anyhow, he said that the earliest date for install would be a week from Thursday, which would be April 5th...  So I told him to make the appointment for Friday, April 6th, so I can take off and make a 3-day weekend out of it...   So my installation date is now set for a week from Friday...

He also mentioned that someone might be coming over for a pre-installation visit, I told him this would be fine as long as they let me know the night before..  I don't understand what that visit is supposed to be about, maybe its to make an assesment of my distance from the node to see what level of service I am going to be able to get, I'm not sure...  I will let you know how that goes if that does happen...

Anyhow, that is all I can say for now....   I will write some more after the install with my impresions of the installation and the service itself....

[Gregg Lengling]

Just an FYI no matter how long the install takes or how much wiring or rewiring they have to do, there will be no extra charges.  Also if you have computers to use with the Residential Gateway, the gateway has 802.11b/g in it and they will provide wireless cards (and install them) for you on your computers if you aren't hard wiring them.  Once again there will be NO extra charge.

[TPK]

Just an FYI no matter how long the install takes or how much wiring or rewiring they have to do, there will be no extra charges.  Also if you have computers to use with the Residential Gateway, the gateway has 802.11b/g in it and they will provide wireless cards (and install them) for you on your computers if you aren't hard wiring them.  Once again there will be NO extra charge.

Well they are starting to sound better than the cable company already....  I am hoping they can get the wiring to all 3 TVs I really want to hit..   There is actually a 4th TV, plus a TV in the kitchen that would be nice to get working, but since I am not renting a box for those TVs I don't expect them to wire those up, or will they wire those up as well even though I'm not giving those TVs their own tuners??  Actually thinking about it, maybe I should rent a couple of boxes for the first month or two just so I can get them to wire those up, but in reality I can probably do that wiring myself...

Indeed that is the one thing I am going to miss about cable television...  I like those analog channels because all I had to do was plug a coax into them and I was able to get some television on them....  This was just fine for secondary televisions like the one in the kitchen (who wants to watch the Sopranos in the kitchen anyway?)...  After this changeover I'm probably going to have to do something funky like split the output from one of the boxes and put in some kind of IR/RF bridge, but I will worry about that later...

Personally, I would rather that they didn't touch my computers or routers at all, and just let me set it up...    I hope that the wireless on the residential gateway is optional and can be turned off and/or configured by the end-user (me)...  The 2.4Ghz frequency around here is full enough as it is.... I also hope that I can use my own router, as I have it set up just the way I want it...  

Also, I am making the assumption that I get a real IP address with the internet service and not a fake 10-dot address like AOL gives you...  If that is going to be the case, Im gonna drop that internet service quicker than lager turns to pee..

[Gregg Lengling]

They will only wire to STB's they are putting in.  Yes you can control the wireless gateway in the RG yourself, you will be putting a password in and protecting it.

[jjallou]

Still waiting for U-verse to become active in my neck of the woods.
What local channels are available in HD? Do they carry them all?
Thanks.

[Gregg Lengling]

Just go to http://uverse.att.com and look at the channel lineup, it's pretty good.  The HD channels are in the 1000's on the guide numbers.

[jjallou]

Just go to http://uverse.att.com and look at the channel lineup, it's pretty good.  The HD channels are in the 1000's on the guide numbers.

Seems they mimic TWC with their HD local line-up. No CW or MyNet available either. :bang:
I would think that AT&T would at least have the room for more locals, unlike TWC.
I'd like to see at least CW for Smallville & Supernatural, oh yea, Everybody Hates Chris too. MyNet is starting to have some good movies in HD once in a while too.
Everything else looks good though.

[Gregg Lengling]

Ah but you are wrong and as a matter of fact Milwaukee's 18 and 24 are their national feed for MyNetwork and CW.

[jjallou]

Ah but you are wrong and as a matter of fact Milwaukee's 18 and 24 are their national feed for MyNetwork and CW.

Cool! More HD locals than TWC Milwaukee and DirectTV / Dish.
I guess it would kill them to update their channel listing though.

[gparris]

Yeah NYC just added its version of our MyNtwk24HD from TWC yesterday...it has had CWHD for some time, too.
So looks like TWC CAN add all the HD locals if it WANTS to vs. TWC Milwaukee.

AT&T has it all the way for HD subs, doesn't Bev & Co. at TWC care anymore about its HD subs?

 NO.:mad:
It's been many weeks since the Sinclair agreement was signed and every other TWC location in the country has added their HD stations.

One more reason to go AT&T for HD service in Milwaukeeland (if you can).

[TPK]

Well, I got the u-verse installed on Friday, and it appears to be working... I will post here about the installation, and then I will make another post about the service itself...

First off, at some point last week, Im not sure exactly when, someone came out to the house and installed some sort of connection box on the side of my house...   This must have been that pre-installation visit I was told about by the sales rep I talked with the week before...  It looks like they strung a new cable from the phone pole out to the house, and then ran that cable down to the box, and brought the phone line going into the house down to the box as well....  Then they ran a grounding wire around the house and hooked it to the electrical junction near the air conditioner in the back...  I wish I would have been here when they did that, because I would have asked him to run the grounding wire closer to the gound, instead of at waist-level alongside the coax run that TWC installed when they came out here and installed cable when I first moved in...  The TWC installer ran that black cable around the house to get into the bedroom, and he did it 3 feet off the ground so it looks horrible...   Now that I have gotten rid of cable I would have liked to have removed that coax run so I don't have this black stripe running around the house but now that grounding wire is there, so I guess it doesn't matter anymore, unless I re-wire that grounding wire...  Maybe I will do just that when it gets warmer

Additionally on the phone pole out back of my house, there appears to be some new equipment with orange labels on the line next to the pole...  I do not know what that stuff is (a fiber run perhaps?)

So the installers came out here on Friday...  First the main installer came out, and then a little while later her manager showed up...  For the most part they did a pretty good job...  My house has no basement, so I asked them if they could try to wire everything to the closet that houses my utilities, as this is a central location to the house, and I have some existing writing already going to that room (its really the only logical place to put the residential gateway (RG) and wire the house up)...  The installer was worried that with my furnace in the (tiny) room, that it would get too hot and this would not be good for the RG....  I assured her that the temperatures don't get too extreme in that room...  It can get kind of balmy in there, but I don't think it gets so hot in there that it would be painful to stand in there (if you could fit) so my guess is that it really shouldn't be damaging to electronics, but who knows...  I hope that this doesn't turn out to be a mistake, but again, there is really no other place where the RG could logically go...  Anyhow, they ended up mounting the RG to the wall in that room, and brought the new wiring down the same path my existing wiring was using...   It would have been nice if they would have installed some sort of inter-connect rack of some sort, to clean up all the wiring, as opposed to running the wiring from the ceiling of the room directly to the RG..  I would have been ecstatic if they would have done that, but I think that would be asking for too much...  At some point in the future, I will install something like that on my own, and get that (what's turning into a) rats nest of wiring into a clean, labeled, wring hub...

The installers  were here for quite a while on Friday, and had to spend a lot of time in my cramped and cluttered attic running wires...  My fear was that they were going to run wiring and leave it on the floor of the attic, and not leave enough slack for me to take the wiring and staple it up to the ceiling beams to get it out of the way later on...  After they left, I checked the attic and they did actually staple the wiring to the ceiling beams already...  So again, I should say that they did a pretty decent job...  That said, there are a couple things that I wish they would have done better or differently...

First off, I sorta wish they would have run another coax or cat-5 (these boxes can be wired up with either with cat-5 or with coax) to my third television in my rec-room, instead of using the existing coax run that I had put in myself a couple of years ago to pipe the analog cable out to that room...  At some point I'm sure I am going to want to use that coax run for something in that room, and I will have to put in another coax run to replace the one I lost to the u-verse box..  Plus, I did a really crappy job when I did that coax run, and its messy and runs along the floor of the rec-room and doesn't have a proper outlet and such...  I really shouln't blame the installers for this though, since I did give them that option, so really its my fault...  I told them that they could use that wiring if they needed to, but that it might not be a good idea to trust the wiring that I put in myself (trying to hint that they should make another professionally installed run)...  In retrospect, I should have insisted that they make another run out to the rec-room...  Oh well, I guess I wanted to be accommodating...   At least they did re-terminate the existing coax like I asked them to, since this is quad-shield stuff and is really difficult to terminate unless you have the proper tools and/or physical strength...  Perhaps Im being nit-picky here..  After all, the installers did make an additional cat-5 run to my main HDTV in the den, even though I had an existing cat-5 run going there..  I had told them that I was using that cat-5 run for my x-box, and I really needed that left alone for that purpose...    They also did make another cat-5 run from the RG into my computer room even though I had an existing cat-5 run, because I told them that I wanted to use my own router, so I needed the cat-5 run to go from the RG to my router, while still leaving the existing cat-5 run so I can wire the network up to the rest of my house via the utility closet..

Secondly, and a bit more annoying than that, the cat-5 run they made to my bedroom was put into a RJ-45 wall plate set up on the wall WAY too high on the wall...  The 4.5 inch tall wall plate was installed 17 to 21.5 inches up on the wall (yes, I measured)...  The installer told me that he wanted to put the run closer to the corner of the room, but he said he couldn't go over that far because he wanted to avoid the water pipes that were going down the wall in that area (there is a bathroom on the other side of that wall)...  Okay fine, but why couldn't he install the wall plate a foot or so lower on the wall??  It looks ridiculous there, especially since its in the middle of the wall (horizontally)..  Its impossible to avoid looking at it...  In contrast, the electrical outlet, which sits 28 inches to the right of the RJ-45 wall plate, is set  8.75 to 13 inches up off the floor...   I just don't understand why he couldn't put the wall plate more in line with the electrical outlets...  Did he hit a stud or a joist or a pipe or an electrical conduit or something, or was it just laziness or maybe he ran out of wire??  I don't know, perhaps he did, but he only mentioned to me that he couldn't go over to the corner because of the water pipes...  This wall jack sort of puts a blemish on an otherwise pretty good install....  At some point in the future I will attempt to re-do this wall jack myself, and try to patch up the hole that the current wall-jack will leave behind...

Anyhow, all 3 boxes plus the residential gateway were installed in my house, and all appear to be working properly (although far from flawlessly, I will get into that in my next post)...   I only have 1 HD television in my house, but all boxes are HD capable...   Only 1 out of the 3 boxes has DVR capabilities, so I put that box on my main HD television....   Contrary to what I have heard, the RG is not capable of being used as another set top box, as it lacks outputs for television...  All boxes also have digital optical outputs, but curiously they lack digital coaxial outputs...  I guess I am used to equipment having both types of digital outputs, and I was using the coaxial output from the TWC DVR box into my receiver, so I had to switch the cabling over to optical..  Luckily, I had a spare optical input and an extra optical cable to use, so this didn't cause a problem for me, but I can see how a lack of a coaxial out might hinder some installations...

The boxes are physically smaller (much smaller) than TWC boxes, and therefore may fit in more spots than the corresponding TWC boxes can fit in...  However they lack a clock (they are too small to contain an effective clock display anyhow), so it looks like I'm going to have to invest in a clock for my main TV room (oh well, picking nits again)...

All in all, the installation went well, as I have everything working the way I want it to....   I had to screw around with the internet and my router quite a bit to get that to work the way I wanted it to, but I will get into that in a later post as well....

[LowSignal]

TPK have you tried using a wireless bridge for one of the outlets yet?
Also I hope you offered the installers something to drink

[TPK]

TPK have you tried using a wireless bridge for one of the outlets yet?
Also I hope you offered the installers something to drink

I don't think the TV boxes can communicate wirelesly for the video can they??  Isn't the wireless part of the RG just for the PC connections??   Anyhow I turned the wireless off on the RG because I already have a pretty good wireless access point and I would rather use that...  (The RG can also act as a wireless access point, but I don't want to use that feature)..

For the internet, I had to configure the RG for the DMZ plus mode, so it would bridge the internet to my existing router...  This makes me happy because the router assumes the (one) real internet IP address, and works like it should....  I will try to explain this in some detail in another post (dont have time right now), since it did take me quite a while to figure it out...

And oh yes....  The installers were here for a long time, and I asked them several times if they needed food or drink....  I think one of them did take a glass of water or something...  I try to be a gracious host

[Gregg Lengling]

You are correct that the Wireless is for internet computer connections only.  The STB's are to be hooked up with either CAT5 or HPNA (Coax).  The STB's don't have any wireless functions.  However if you could figure out a way to configure a wireless device that provides cat5 to the box it theoretically should work.

[TPK]

So, I've had U-verse services for almost a week now, and I am just starting to get comfortable using it...  My verdict is that for now it is still in a 'beta' test phase, but shows a somewhat promising future, as long as they can overcome their hardware and bandwidth limitations...  

Now I am still getting used to the service, and I think that I am probably going to stick with it for a year or so, and see if they are able to make improvements over that time...    IF they cannot fix the most glaring issues by then, then I will most likely switch to satellite, or get rid of all pay services (except for internet) entirely and go with an OTA DVR or something...

The biggest problem with the service, for me, has to do with the high definition picture quality...

As of right now, the U-verse service is delivered through a really fat DSL line, rated at 27 megabits per second (Mb) downstream (according to my residential gateway (RG), I am getting 27 Mb downstream, and 2 Mb upstream)..   6 Mb of this bandwidth is reserved for internet services, leaving 21 or so Mb for television services...  This is the main reason why they cannot deliver more than a single HD stream at a time, because it would this would take more bandwidth than that to deliver a second HD channel..  However I hear that by the end of the second quarter of 2007, they will increase the bandwidth from 27Mb to 40Mb, which should allow for more simultaneous HD streams, along with (hopefully) an increase in HD picture quality..

The main reason why I switched to U-verse had to do with the number of HD channels available to u-verse as opposed to TWC..   As a HD television set owner, standard definition simply doesn't cut it for me, the same way I imagine black and white television doesn't cut it for those of us that are blessed with color television sets...  The way I see it, the 300 or so SD channels provided by both TWC and U-verse don't even count, and I would be just as happy with or without those channels..  To figure out how much money I am paying per channel, I take the amount of money I am paying for the service, and divide by the number of HD channels I am provided with...  All I really care about are the HD channels....

Before with TWC I was paying an unreal amount of money for 12 or so channels, and now, with U-verse, I am paying an unreal (albiet slightly less) amount of money for 30 or so channels...  This, for me, provides a much  greater value for U-verse over TWC...  But this is only the case, of course, if the HD channels are really HD channels...

It almost doesn't matter if I am provided with 10 or 100 HD channels, if the PQ on the HD channels is no better than the SD channels...  Now I won't go so far as to say that the HD channels aren't any better than the SD channels, but I will say that the PQ on the HD channels is a far cry from acceptable...

It appears that the U-verse service re-encodes the digital channels with MPEG-4 to conserve bandwidth....  All channels (even the SD channels ) are encoded this way...  But they go way too far (in my opinion) with the compression...  On my modest 50 inch Samsung DLP, you can clearly see the blocking, blurriness, and motion artifacts such as picture skipping on the HD channels...  I can only imagine that the PQ problems would only become more obvious on a larger, better, HD television set...

Now its possible that some of my PQ problems may stem from the fact that I have my box set to output to 720p, when most channels are broadcast in the 1080i format...    This is because my TV has a native 720 resolution, and also because the box can only be set to output one resolution or the other, as opposed to giving you the option to pass the channels to the TV in their native resolution...

Having to choose to force resolution between 720p and 1080i could be a potential problem for some users...  For me, this isn't too much of an issue, since I know that my TV has a native 720 resolution...  But if I had a TV with a native 1080 resolution, how would I set up my box???   Setting it to 1080i would effectively halve the frame rate from those few 720p channels like ESPN, while setting it to 720p would down-res the more plentiful higher resolution 1080i channels...   No, there is no 1080p output option on the boxes...

I suppose in the case where I had a 1080 TV, I would set up my box to output to 1080i, but I would then want to switch it to the 720p mode when watching sporting events on the 720p channels...  But this would be a real pain....

I know that having the box switch resolutions from channel to channel may make it take longer to switch channels as the TV is forced to adjust resolutions and therefore might increase the number of complaints about the service, but can't they at least just give us that option??   I mean, have the boxes output to just one resolution or the other as a default for installation, as most users won't notice or care or know any better...    But for those of us who know about this stuff and want the best possible PQ, and won't mind the extra delay from the TV, let us set up the boxes to output the channels in their native resolution...

Anyhow, the high definition picture quality is the biggest problem I have with the service...  I think its even a bigger problem than having only a single HD stream, but perhaps that's only because I have (for now) just one single HD television set, and the multiple HD stream problem might be more profund for those folks that have multiple HD sets and a large family....  But for me, the PQ is the biggest problem...

The second biggest problem I have with the service has to do with the responsiveness of the set top box (STB) that outputs to my HD television, making the service difficult, even painful to use at times....  I will talk more about that later, unless you tell me to shut up already ...

Now I know that I am probably sounding quite negative of the service here....  I guess it's just the critic in me...   It should be known, however, that there are also a lot of good points to the service as well, with several advantages over TWC...  One of the best features is the fact that you can access your DVR functions via a web interface on an internet site...   In fact, this is the primary way I schedule recordings on my box, as using the DVR to do so can be an exercise in torture, as I have mentioned before..   I can explain the web interface in detail if you would like to know more about it...  Just let me know