AT&T U-verse-how do you like it? Need advice.

[Cathyb]

After a month of AT&T cancellations we finally got the TV installed with the U-Verse along with HD. We love the TV picture, but have a lot to learn in recording more than one program.

Any tips on:

1. How to record two programs that run almost simultaneously? We had Big Loser on for two hours but half way through it, another show we wanted to tape -- all while we watched a third one. We thought we did it right, but lost one of the programs -- it didn't tape.

2. Also -- where is the Primer online for the TV U-Verse? I saw it once and can't find it again

3. Did you have trouble getting what was promised by AT&T to you? We joined their program in December but they had 'problems' getting to us and that promo expired. We are now promised $$$ that have not been honored.

Any and all advice is welcome!

 

[Nickfromct]

I've had ATT Uverse for about 1 1/2 years and love it. The taping watching can get a little confusing at first. They advertise you can DVR/watch 4 programs at one time but those are only lo-def. If you're using hi-def you can only watch/DVR 2 programs at any time. So we'll tape stuff in lo-def where we aren't going to watch in hi def to try it as a work around. We've had some problems with the billing for our cell phones, but we just keep calling and they keep giving money off our bill, so we've been ahead due to their mishaps. Otherwise its a great service and really enjoy it.

 

[PGtime]

U-verse blog

I don't have U-verse as we live in Verizon territory and therefore have FIOS. That being said, when we had some goofy problems, I searched and found a decent blog, (adjusted link for U-verse):

http://www.highdefforum.com/t-u-verse-59/

Try that for help.

Paul

 

[UWSurfer]

I'm one of the approximately 15 percent of the country who doesn't subscribe to Cable/Sat TV, but rather uses an over the air roof antenna. Last check I get 130 channels over the air here in LA.

That said, we had U-Verse installed last week here at home for broadband only service and I was surprised by some of the technical pieces of it. We've had DSL for more than 10 years in a couple of homes. DSL is internet provided over the copper phone wires that already run into your home or business. It's generally slower due to limitations of distance of the equipment on the phone company end is from you at the receiving end. Most DSL originates from the phone company central office.

Verizon FIOS rolled out several years ahead of U-Verse in SoCal and is fiber to the home. There's a great deal of bandwidth and speed available over fiber. Once it arrives to the home, FIOS has a couple of interface boxes which distribute TV over traditional coax in the home as well as to the internet wifi router they provide. They also have a split to interface to the phone service or pull new wire and jacks depending on the installation.

So when I ordered U-verse several weeks ago, I began to think through our installation and began thinking about pulling a separate power outlet to where the equipment would likely be placed, and which TV cable I would sacrifice to get to the router location. I didn't install the outlet, but did have it all figured out and ready. When I began to explain my idea to the technician, I was surprised to hear they don't do it that way with u-verse here.

In much of LA, AT&T took a shortcut. Instead of going to the expense of running fiber to each and every home, they ran it to centrally located equipment boxes local to the neighborhood, and then connect that to the copper wires to your home. Essentially they just moved the equipment closer to you, instead of the central office and can then use the copper and provide a faster DSL. The tech tells me they did this in most of LA and given the number of existing homes and business that was a pretty smart way to leverage their existing network and deploying at a lower cost. Still, I feel a little cheated. Happy I don't have the additional equipment but still wish I had fiber to the home.

Oh and our broadband is quite a bit faster and works fine.

 

[dioxide45]

I've had ATT Uverse for about 1 1/2 years and love it. The taping watching can get a little confusing at first. They advertise you can DVR/watch 4 programs at one time but those are only lo-def.

This is a little tidbit that they don't points out in their ads (it may be in the small print that flashes up for about 3 seconds). We have Uverse available to us. We currently have DirecTV. I am actually very happy we didn't switch. We recently upgraded our second DirecTV receiver to a HDDVR ad were able to enable DirecTV Whole Home DVR service. With two HDDVRs we are able to record/watch up to four live shows at one time all in HD. With Whole Home we can record two shows on one of the DVRs, watch another on the TV connected to that DVR and also stream a show to any of the other receivers connected to the Whole Home system. It is great, though does cost an extra $3 a month.

I did consider upgrading our ATT DSL service to Uverse Internet when they had a special at the beginning of the year. The special ended and we were able to negotiate a $20 discount off of our DSL because of a special they were running for new customers.

One important thing, check your connection speeds regularly (at least weekly) at a site like speedtest.net. We have the 6Mbps DSL package, but were only getting about 1.4Mbps downloads. This went on for about a month and I finally called tech support. They ended up sending a technician out who had it fixed in about 10 minutes with a phone call. Something about the mapping being messed up.

 

[heathpack]

Most shows are aired multiple times. Mr. H usually searches for an alternate time recording that does not conflict. We rarely watch anything during it's actual airtime anymore.

There is a UVerse app if you have an iPhone, you can program shows to record remotely, which is pretty sweet if you are out and realize you forgot to set a recording.

Sorry I do not know the answers to the rest of your questions, Mr. H is the TV person in our house. UVerse is not perfection, but it is INFINATELY better than the old Time Warner, the worst customer service anywhere anytime hands down.

H