July 12, 2010

U-verse.

Do any of you use U-verse? Like it?
Posted by Ann Althouse at 7:43 AM
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25 comments:

Capt. Schmoe said...

I have U-Verse for CATV and internet service. I have had it for over one year and like it.

Customer service is far better than what my cable company was providing and they seem to want to keep me as a customer. The cable company seemed to think that I had no other options.

I have had a couple of network service outages, but they were resolved quickly.

I pay for 3mb and am always at 2.9 or above down, around .9 - 1.1 up.
U-verse says that 2.6 or above is acceptable.

HDTV is great, better than the satellite we have at work and better than the cable we had at home.

In short, I like it. Good luck.

7/12/10, 7:54 AM
Anonymous said...

I have Verizon's equivalent, FIOS, which brings a fiber strand right up to to my home.

The speeds available on my data connection are fantastic. I think right now I'm getting 20 MB down (towards my house) and 20 up(away) for about $60 per month.

I find the FIOS TV picture and user interface to be much better than satellite.
My vote is yes.

7/12/10, 8:36 AM
Anonymous said...

I should add that as a former telecom network engineer, it brings me huge kicks to have more bandwidth capacity to my home than we used to have to some early 90s Sprint switch sites.

7/12/10, 8:37 AM
Chase said...

had it for 2 years now.
Great bandwith, excellent service.

7/12/10, 8:41 AM
rhhardin said...

AT&T worldnet didn't mind axing all its users' personal web pages, that users might have put up to ten years of work into.

Don't count on them for good character towards users in the long term, in short.

One night stands only may be okay.

7/12/10, 8:45 AM
MadisonMan said...

My son is advocating for faster internet at home, is this an answer?

I just wonder how it does during peak load time? Our dsl is pretty glacial after dinner when everyone in the neighborhood hops onto the internet.

7/12/10, 8:51 AM
Pat said...

I've had it for two years. The broadband and wi fi is excellent, I have not had a single down time.

The TV is great, lots of channels. The one very small knock is that the HD for sports is not quite as good as regular cable, because of broadband limitations. I researched it after the fact, and it is compressed through software, so there is some very slight degradation in the picture. In fast moving sports, like soccer, there is some very slight pixalation of the background.

But overall, I am very happy with it. Our prior service, Comcast, was down frequently, and the internet service sputtered.

7/12/10, 9:11 AM
garage mahal said...

Love U-Verse. I think I only pay $15 more than I did with Charter, with 5 dozen more crystal clear HD channels. Surprisingly good service from AT&T as well.

7/12/10, 9:14 AM
J said...

A question about UVerse: I 've spoken to several people who love it, but who noted you can only record one HD program at a time, and that you cannot watch a recorded HD program while recording another HD program. T or F?

7/12/10, 9:27 AM
sane_voter said...

I have had it for about 1 year after changing from cable and plan on keeping it for now.

Advantages:
1. More HD channels
2. more storage on the DVR
3. better user interface
4. can initiate recordings and watch the DVR recordings on any tv in the house.
5. cheaper than cable for the top of the line channel selection (HBO, showtime)

Disadvantages:
1. You can only pause live TV on the TV directly connected to the DVR (the other TVs have small boxes that connect to the DVR and do not have the same functionality)
2. the big "2wire" gateway box that is the brains of the system and splits out the internet, phone and TV,
3. you can only have two active HD signals running at one time (i.e. you are recording a show in HD, only one other HD stream is available among the TVs to watch live, or if you have three TVs, only 2 can watch live HD at the same time).

7/12/10, 9:31 AM
J said...

Sane - Thanks for the details. To clarify on the "two HD stream" issue, can two TVs in the house simultaneously watch separate recorded HD programming if no other HD programming is being recorded or watched live?

7/12/10, 9:40 AM
Unknown said...

We've had it for a few months and the service is better than Time Warner, although no break in price.

We had a problem after an electrical storm fried our wiring and they gave us a break on the cost of the call, giving us the option to run the phones off the modem rather than making a call to fix the wiring which The Blonde didn't want to pay for, so I can't really complain.

rhhardin said...

AT&T worldnet didn't mind axing all its users' personal web pages, that users might have put up to ten years of work into.

Worldnet (their dial up service) doesn't exist any more. It's att.net or nothing.

7/12/10, 9:59 AM
Graham Powell said...

I have Uverse and it's been fine so far. It's like electricity or water - you only care when it's not working - and it's worked great.

7/12/10, 10:14 AM
Brian Day said...

Put me in the yes column.
I've had U-Verse for over two years now, although the last year has been internet only.
$30/mo for 3MB downloads which always tests at 2.9-3.3MB.
I think I've had about 1 hour of downtime in two years.

I also had the TV service initially (my son is a U-Verse installer and lived at the house at the time. He wanted the TV service so he paid for it.)
I am not a DVR person so I had no problems with the supposed DVR shortcomings.

The "gateway" box isn't that large considering it takes a single incoming signal and splits it into phone, fax, TV, internet (wired and wireless).

7/12/10, 11:32 AM
Mike Smith said...

Sane_voter has listed the pros and cons the same way I would have.

I think DirecTV has the best picture in HD but the service was constantly down at my house and their HORRIBLE customer service caused me to kick them to the curb.

Cable had lousy customer service but was more reliable than DTV. (I've never tried Dish Network).

So, I got U-verse and it is fine. The customer service, once you get to the right person, is better than Cox or DirecTV.

7/12/10, 12:29 PM
Anonymous said...

Overall good. The DVR sucks if you're used to real Tivo. There's a 40-second skip instead of 30, so it doesn't skip commercials right, and the back-skip is 7 seconds instead of 10. The forward skip isn't as fast as Tivo because it shows a glimpse of two or three shots in the 40 seconds you're skipping. There's also no intuitive recording capability. Actually, I really hate their DVR, but an HD Tivo was $600 and this came free with the service, so I lived with it.

Network-wise, very good.

Like all the combo deals, it's good when it works, but when it's out, everything is out. Both the cable and the control box provide a single point of failure that will take down TV, network and phone (if you have their phone).

7/12/10, 1:06 PM
Anonymous said...

I've had U-Verse for over a year and love it. The biggest selling point for me was that I can record in one room and watch in another.

I've had no trouble, and pay less for cable and internet than I did with Comcast.

7/12/10, 1:18 PM
Freeman Hunt said...

If you want to stream Netflix, you have to pay for one of the faster speeds.

7/12/10, 1:29 PM
Hector Owen said...

Use it, like it, posted about it.

7/12/10, 1:31 PM
Long Time Listener said...

I have had it for a 1-2 years, and so far I like it much better than Comcast in every way. Customer service especially. Dealing with Comcast is almost as bad as dealing with a government agency. They act like they're doing you a favor by taking your money, instead of treating you like a customer. Also, I pay less each month for many more channels than I had with Comcast.

Same Uverse limitations as sane_voter said. Also, no phone bundle in my area yet, but that's no big deal.

7/12/10, 1:43 PM
dave1310 said...

I had U-verse for several months before I left Houston in 1998. I'm not a tv-type but I liked U-verse a lot, especially that phone, wireless, broadband and TV was all in same package. MY ONLY complaint was that when I left for NC, AT&T made it impossible for me to return the U-verse devices and now want to charge me for not returning something they made impossible to return.

7/12/10, 3:23 PM
Hector Owen said...

U-verse is currently negotiating with Rainbow Media about whether to pay higher rates for AMC, IFC, and WE channels, or drop them from the service. So if those channels are important to you, check back in a couple of days. Wednesday is the contract deadline. (Sundance Channel is another from this provider, but it is not being mentioned as one that might be dropped. I dunno.)

7/12/10, 4:09 PM
Life in the Fifties said...

Have had uverse for over a year after comcast, then TWC, then Dish Network. Liked the Dish but could not stand the outages.

With uverse, Internet is great and our home network runs with 5-7 computers, both Apple and PC. I use the internet for a high profile home office. TV has great features, but if your DVR goes out, you lose everything recorded. Phones have been good - much cheaper and better features.

We have always received same day service when there has been a problem (3 times so far.) The latest was cross talk on the two phone lines. The technician (same day) finally figured out the home alarm was connecting the two lines inadvertently (for some reason only after 14 months of working fine.)

Best service of any company. Great features, reasonable price.

7/12/10, 6:47 PM
blake said...

My dad's had it for a couple of years and is pretty much pleased with it.

I'm probably going to get the 'net connection—right now, I'm doing AT&T for phone, Time-Warner Cable for 'net, and DirecTV for TV.

Probably will end up switching to U-verse for TV, too. (Home-brewed DVR so I don't care much about the U-Verse's limitations.)

7/12/10, 11:20 PM
Jeff Hall said...

I had U-verse installed at a house a little less than 3 months ago. I wanted to keep DSL at my office across town.

(1) They arrived promptly.

(2) Halfway through the installation the installer's boss arrived and talked with him for almost 2 hours about personnel matters. I had to take the afternoon off because they took longer to finish than they promised when I made the appointment.

(3) They trashed my house. I mean, holes in wordwork and wires dangling loose from house. I wanted 3 TVs connected, but when I saw the damaged caused by the first 2, I decided not to have a TV in the guest bedroom any more.

(4) The installer went onto my computer without my permission and without me being in the room and changed settings on my computer. I was in the house the entire time, he could have called me in if he needed permission.

(5) If you have AT&T DSL, the installer can see your password! (I know, because I walked in and my password, which I presumed was encrypted and kept safe by AT&T, was on my screen.)

(6) 2 days later the DSL at my office stopped working. AT&T customer service said that this was an order from the U-verse office. The U-verse office isn't open nights or weekends. I spent over 5 hours in their phone maze and visiting the AT&T store to get someone to talk to me about restoring my service. Nobody had the authority to take ownership of this issue. I had to move my office into my house or face not having an office at all. I also told them about the installation problems.

(7) 3 months later and nobody has gotten back to me about it.

(8) The actual service is OK, but I dread calling tech support when things go bad.

7/14/10, 2:19 PM

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