Questions for existing Uverse customers

[cnjbucks]

Good morning,

I am considering to make the switch from TW to AT&T and some questions:

1) For the installation, does all of their eqiupment need to be in the same location?   Our primary TV is on the first floor but our computer is on the 2nd floor of our house.  I'd like to keep the PC hardwired to the connection.  I didn't know if the dsl modem needed to be in a particular area.

2)  Have the rates gone up significantly for customers?   I've heard mixed comments on this.  I realize there will be an increase after the first year once the promotional pricing ends, but I was wondering if people have noticed any other changes.

3)  For those of you that jumped from TW to Uverse, have you noticed a picture quality difference?  I remember when Uverse came to SE WI, some people have said the picture quality is better with TW.   I've seen Uverse at my in-laws, and I don't notice any picture difference to what I have w/TW.

Thanks in advance to those that reply.  I appreciate any input people may have regarding Uverse.

[kevbeck122]

They will probably want to install the modem as close to the NID (phone box on the outside of your house) as possible to avoid signal loss.  For your 2nd TV, they can use existing coax runs for the box, otherwise there is a wireless box they offer.  It uses a separate 802.11n (5GHz) access point that they provide.

After the promotional deal their rates were pretty high compared to what I was paying with DIRECTV.  I didn't try to negotiate down, and went back to DIRECTV after the deals ended.  Now I'm with TWC and an even better deal .

Picture was softer than with TWC and DIRECTV, and fast movement was noticeably worse (picture blocked up/pixelated easier).  U-verse uses very low bitrate MPEG4 compared with other providers.  The SD channels are much better than TWC and DIRECTV though.

Things that I liked about Uverse: instant channel changes, whole home DVR, guide is better looking than TWC

Dislikes: Picture quality could be better, you're limited to 3-4 HD streams coming into your house (so if you happen to be recording 4 shows at once, you can only watch something recorded on the DVR or one of the current shows recording).

[PONIES]

Your questions:

1) Their DVRs are connected via Cat5. You should keep the U-verse gateway near your PC.

2) After your first year discounts run out you will be paying the same, if not more, as you would be paying with Time Warner. My U-verse bill for their 24/3 Mbps speed tier and their comparable TV package (U-200) compared to Time Warner's 30/5 Mbps speed tier and Standard + "Digital Variety" TV package after my promotional AT&T pricing ran out was $20 higher than my Time Warner bill at standard Time Warner prices.

3) It is absolutely dreadful. See the end of my post for more details.

I found AT&T U-verse to be inferior to Time Warner Cable in every aspect. Research indicates that AT&T's "fiber-to-the-node" technology is a dead end. AT&T has maxed out what it can do with its copper infrastructure and until they go fiber all the way to the home there is nothing more they can do to upgrade U-verse. AT&T is very short term profits driven and rolling out FTTH is an expensive long-term investment so this will not be happening with AT&T any time soon.

Let's start with the Internet side of U-verse: What you see on U-verse now is what you will be seeing years into the future. Time Warner's 'Extreme' (30/5) and 'Wideband' (50/5) tiers already offer faster speeds than AT&T's maximum speed package - 'Turbo Max' (which is 24/3 Mbps).

Time Warner's network has much more room for expansion - DOCSIS 3.0 supports download speeds over 300 Mbps and upload over 100 Mbps. They have been expanding DOCSIS 3.0 channel bonding in different markets in recent months as well. Time Warner is rumored to be working on upgrading their Extreme tier's speeds to 30/10 Mbps, as well as their Wideband's speeds to 50/25 Mbps. The Carolinas and New York City may see these new speeds before the end of this year.

Basically, AT&T no longer cares about their wired infrastructure and is content to let it die slowly while they focus on wireless. Their profits with cell phones are much higher than their U-verse business because they can price gouge people much easier. There's people paying hundreds of dollars a month for cell phone data plans with 5 GB bandwidth caps. That kind of highway robbery doesn't exist on the wired side of the Internet... yet.

The biggest flaw with their Internet product is their bandwidth cap policy. This is an absolute deal breaker. AT&T has implemented a 250 GB bandwidth cap on their Internet service. What this means is that their 24 Mbps package, which prior to this bandwidth cap had the capacity to transfer over 7 terabytes of data in a month, AT&T will now artificially restrict you to using 250 gigabytes of data in a month. That is a 98% reduction in level of service!

With AT&T's bandwidth cap policy you have now gone from being able to use your connection as much as you want to only being allowed to use it at its maximum speed for 2% of your billing period! If you were to take your 24 Mbps speed tier and factor in the bandwidth cap, you're now only allowed to use it at an average speed of under 1 Mbps.

The reason why AT&T has implemented artificial bandwidth restrictions is obvious: so they can charge you $10 per 50 GB 'overages.' It's the same racket they run in the wireless sector. If you run AT&T's 24 Mbps U-verse tier at its full speed for a whole month you will be looking at overage charges of $1,500.

Now as for Time Warner Cable, they are the last major cable provider in the United States who have not forced mandatory bandwidth caps upon all of their subscribers. This is admirable. I have personally pushed terabytes of data in a month on Time Warner Cable and they just do not care. This would have cost me hundreds of dollars in overage fees on AT&T. I am always willing to defend Time Warner as long as they do not go down the path of Internet overcharging.

The price difference between the tiers of Time Warner and AT&T are comparable. AT&T's fastest 'Max Turbo' tier (24/3 Mbps) is priced at $69 a month (because of a mandatory modem rental fee of $4.) Time Warner's 30/5 Mbps UNCAPPED 'Extreme' tier is priced at $70 a month.  There is no question that Time Warner offers the better value when it comes to the Internet side.



Now, let's move on to the TV portion of the service. I don't have a lot of positive things to say about it either... but there are two positive things. Only two:

1) AT&T's channel lineup is pretty robust. The HD lineup does have more channels than Time Warner. However, they're not very good channels. They are mostly "filler" channels like "BYU TV HD". What is BYU TV, you might ask? It's a Mormon propaganda channel. Yep, apparently AT&T thinks that magic underwear and Kolob-dwelling space gods are more important to carry than something like, say, the Game Show Network. GSN HD is a channel which Time Warner added last year and AT&T does not carry and it's better than most of AT&T's exclusives. Examination of AVS's HD lineups finds AT&T missing other good channels like IFC HD. AXS TV (used to be HDNet) seems to be the only good HD channel AT&T carries which Time Warner does not.

2) Their DVR interface is solid and operates as a master DVR - sub receiver networked system. Everything is recorded to a single master DVR and receivers view them via ethernet network. The interface is based on Microsoft's MediaRoom software. It's fast, and it's native HD. Definitely better than the default interface on Time Warner's DVRs.

So let's proceed to the negatives:

You can view or record a maximum of 4 HD channels simultaneously on AT&T U-verse which goes for all receivers in the house. They all must abide by that 4 streams limit. So if you want to record two shows and have kids who want to record two shows at the same time, no one can watch TV during that time because that would require a 5th stream coming into your house. This is pretty sad as you can have unlimited streams on Time Warner. With two Ceton InfiniTV 4 CableCARD tuners running on Time Warner, for example, you've already doubled the number of HD streams you can have over AT&T.

Speaking of CableCARD tuners, if you're wanting AT&T for the interface, it's not necessary. It's very possible to have a fantastic interface on Time Warner Cable and even run the same "master DVR - sub receiver" type system on them like AT&T has. All you have to do is get a CableCARD tuner like the Ceton InfiniTV 4.

Check out this YouTube video of a CableCARD setup running on Time Warner here in the Milwaukee market:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TaYEXnuQVmU

You can run Xbox 360s as receiver units to watch/record video off your master PC which would be equipped with the CableCARD tuner.

The interface is better than AT&T when you go this route and this type of flexibility isn't an option on AT&T, another downside to their service. It only costs $2 a month to rent a CableCARD from Time Warner so you save a lot of money this route. Renting receivers from AT&T/Time Warner costs over $10 a month. AT&T's DVRs only have a pathetic 160 GB of space as well. With a PC equipped with a CableCARD tuner you can use as much space as you can put in your PC. Want a 40,000 gigabyte Time Warner DVR? No problem! Just stick ten 4TB hard drives in your PC.


Viewing HD TV channels on AT&T also slows down your Internet speed - every channel has a bitrate of around 6 Mbps, so for every channel someone is viewing or your DVR is recording, that's another 6 Mbps in speed your connection will drop. The 24 Mbps Internet speed tier on AT&T drops down to just 8 Mbps when viewing your limit of 4 HD channels at once. Time Warner can run as many HD channels simultaneously as you want and it will never affect your Internet speed.

The last thing I will address here is U-verse's picture quality. It is absolutely the worst thing I have ever seen. I wanted to vomit when I saw U-verse TV for the first time. It is such a blurry artifacted mess of garbage. Every other source of "HD" looks better than AT&T. It's not just Time Warner that looks better. Over-the-air antenna of course looks better. Free-to-air satellite of course looks better. Dish Network and DirecTV's overcompressed services? Still a whole let better than AT&T. How about Internet video? Yep, YouTube and Netflix's HD streaming look better too!

It is outrageous that a service you have to pay for looks this bad. AT&T re-compresses everything they receive to 5.7 Mbps H.264 - which really shouldn't look as bad as it does even. They have got to have the worst MPEG-4 encoders in the world.

Here's an identical frame screenshot comparison between Verizon FiOS and AT&T U-verse, and later on, just for shits and giggles - a comparison between AT&T U-verse and YouTube. It is embarrassing how much worse AT&T looks than even YouTube does.

[cnjbucks]

Ponies,

Thanks for the detailed information.   I definitely need to rethink my decision.   the biggest thing I liked with UVerse is the HD lineup and that is why I was considering the switch.  I miss not having HDNet, and as an HBO subscriber, I am impressed by the number of HBO channels they have.  And now that you mention BYUHD, that could be the decision maker, lol.  Just kidding.  

That's good to know about the DSL speed and the TV sharing bandwidth.   I was wondering if one could "conflict" with the other, or at least have the potential to.

Hopefully others will join the discussion and give their feedback.   I'm assuming you ended up going back to TW then?

Thanks for the information.

[PONIES]

I canceled AT&T when they announced bandwidth caps in May 2011 and went back to Time Warner. An added bonus was Time Warner upgrading Milwaukee to DOCSIS 3.0 speeds around that time. That just sweetened the deal. At the time AT&T announced caps I was already aggravated by the horrendous picture quality and decreases in Internet speed when I was recording more than one HD channel. The caps were the straw that broke the camel's back.

Then Time Warner did that HD rollout where they added a bunch of missing basic HD like Nat Geo Wild HD, OWN HD, GSN HD, etc. in the summer/fall and U-verse's offerings were made even more pathetic in comparison. I want to say Time Warner added 16 HD channels to this market in 2011?

I haven't regretted the decision to leave AT&T once. It would take something catastrophic to make me go back like Time Warner announcing bandwidth caps of their own.