Are U-verse 1018 and 1024 actual HD channels?

[LoadStar]

Wow. I didn't think my opinion of U-Verse could have gotten much lower, but it just did. Chopping the HD feeds down and downconverting them to create "virtual" SD channels? That's just... unbelievably lame.

[jjallou]

Wow. I didn't think my opinion of U-Verse could have gotten much lower, but it just did. Chopping the HD feeds down and downconverting them to create "virtual" SD channels? That's just... unbelievably lame.

What else are they going to do come 2009 for legacy tv's when analog gets shut off? I'd say they're future proofing the system.
Seems kinda cheap of them not to offer all locals in HD even when they already receive the digital signal. Oh well, just like Time Warner.

[TPK]

What else are they going to do come 2009 for legacy tv's when analog gets shut off? I'd say they're future proofing the system.
Seems kinda cheap of them not to offer all locals in HD, oh wait, just like Time Warner.

Well...  2009 is still a couple of years away, and that date will probably slip back again, like it has been for years now...

Like I have said before, I am able to go to my SD television set and tune to channel 1004, which is the HD channel, downconverted to SD and sent to my TV letterboxed...

I do not know if channel 1004 is available to non-HD package customers or not... I have the HD package, and I get these locals in HD (all except for 18/24 it seems)..

What should they do??   I know...  How about encode the SD analog feed directly to Mpeg4 (if they want to use Mpeg4)...

Belive it or not, it will probably result in a higher quality picture for SD than taking the Mpeg2 HD feed, uncompressing, downconverting, chopping off the left and right sides, and re-encoding to Mpeg4...

I havent done it yet, but imagine wathcing what would normally be a letterboxed SD show off the SD locals on u-verse...

Like, say, Late night with Conan O'brien...

Nomally, this show is letterboxed in SD..  Therefore the show is in a wide-screen format that fits both HD and SD televisions...  But now, with the SD television set, it will take the HD feed and chop off the left and right sides of the screen, and present the picture in truncated full-screen..

But the show is set up for widescreen, both for SD and HD....  So now, when they have a shot of O'brien talking to a guest, it will probably chop off part of O'brien's right side (as I am facing him) and part of the guest's left side...

If I were a Conan O'brien fan, or did not watch TV normally in HD (I fall into neither of these groups) I would be livid about this...

BUT...  I don't really care all that much....

... However I can imagine people who would....

[gparris]

AT&T U-Verse is not an option for me if this keeps up-what a farce!

Checking recently, I found that Verizon is the provider in my area, not AT&T, so I will be waiting for their FIOS TV.
Verizon FIOS TV is really great from what I have seen in Tampa, Florida.
Few, if any, complain about them because they don't go the cheaper route like AT&T has, either.
When they do complain about FIOS TV, it's about a sports local channel that isn't on from what I have heard from inquiries to friends with it there.
Channels looked great, both SD and HD channels and the HD channels of CW and MyNtwk were truly HD, not this mess.

But U-Verse is making TWC Milwaukee a bit nervous - but obviously not nervous enough:
 Otherwise TWC HD subs would have had more HD channels added than just ESPN2HD.

[TPK]

But U-Verse is making TWC Milwaukee a bit nervous - but obviously not nervous enough:
 Otherwise TWC HD subs would have had more HD channels added than just ESPN2HD.

The way I see it, U-verse has the potential to be great, and blow their competition out of the water...

Right now, they arent there yet (they arent even close)...  They have several problems, and I would not reccommend the service to, say, my parents, or anyone else that isn't willing to deal with these problems...

I see all these problems as solvable, especially if they can get the DSL bottleneck up to 40Mbps like they say they are going to do later this year...

But not all the problems with the service are related to the DSL bottleneck...  And even if they do fatten the pipe out to 40Mbps (or even 100Mbps by 2008, as I have been reading), that doesn't mean that the problems will be solved overnight, they still have to utilize that bandwidth properly to make the service better...

I think u-verse needs to change several things, if they want to set up their infrastructure this way, and be a serious competitor to cable and satellite services...

Hopefully they will get around to doing this over the next year or so...

[TPK]

Heres an interesting development...

The SD channel 4 on u-verse is now not in downconverted truncated HD, instead it looks like encoded analog SD...

So the letterboxing on SD is working and the logos appear to be in the right place...

... But only on channel 4...

The other SD local channels are still in truncated HD....

... So what happened here??  Is this just a coincidence???  Or did u-verse get bitch-slapped by NBC when they saw those screenshots of thier (only) hit show with the left and right sides chopped off???

Should we post screenshots of ABC, CBS, and FOX and see if those SD local channels get fixed too??

[jjallou]

Heres an interesting development...

The SD channel 4 on u-verse is now not in downconverted truncated HD, instead it looks like encoded analog SD...

So the letterboxing on SD is working and the logos appear to be in the right place...

... But only on channel 4...

The other SD local channels are still in truncated HD....

... So what happened here??  Is this just a coincidence???  Or did u-verse get bitch-slapped by NBC when they saw those screenshots of thier (only) hit show with the left and right sides chopped off???

Should we post screenshots of ABC, CBS, and FOX and see if those SD local channels get fixed too??

I've always heard that pictures are worth a thousand words.

[Jimboy]

Heres an interesting development...

The SD channel 4 on u-verse is now not in downconverted truncated HD, instead it looks like encoded analog SD...

So the letterboxing on SD is working and the logos appear to be in the right place...

... But only on channel 4...

The other SD local channels are still in truncated HD....

... So what happened here??  Is this just a coincidence???  Or did u-verse get bitch-slapped by NBC when they saw those screenshots of thier (only) hit show with the left and right sides chopped off???

Should we post screenshots of ABC, CBS, and FOX and see if those SD local channels get fixed too??

 Sent you a PM.