 Review by MSeng 
UPDATED: 42 days ago
member for 9.3 years, 5900 visits, last login: a few hours ago
 Crystal Lake,Mchenry,IL
 $134 per month
 about 20 days
 "Fast, reliable and better than cable"
 "None yet!"
| Pre Sales Information:
Install Co-ordination:
Connection reliability:
Value for money:
(ratings above consensus)
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After months of research at the UVerse site and in various forums, I decided to make the leap from Comcast to UVerse TV. I placed the order for U300 service with 6.0 Mbps Elite VDSL on the 3rd of November and chose an install for the 23rd of the month (a Sunday). Yes, I could have gotten an earlier date but prior commitments precluded me from doing so. Prior to the install date, I received numerous calls and e-mail reminders from AT&T, which would have allowed me ample opportunity to reschedule if necessary.
On the morning of the install, the technician called me 30 minutes before arrival. When he came in, he was very cautious to make certain he didn't track dirt and debris on the floor. In fact, he was very conscious of everything he did and cleaned up after himself throughout the installation. We sat down and reviewed the installation together (included one 2-Wire 3800HGV-B Gateway and three Cisco Set Top boxes, specifically, the placement of the RG from the NID.
From a previous installation of a business phone line (long since disconnected), a CAT-5 cable had been installed a a home run from the NID to the location I had spotted for the RG. The installer and I decided this would be utilized for the connection. He inspected all of the existing coax runs and determined two of the three needed would be replaced with new cable and the third would be re-terminated with new connectors.
The installer left for a few minutes to do the connections at the VRAD. When he returned, he made mention of a sync issue on an existing pair of wires running to the NID but said he had better rates over a 2nd pair and made a call to another department to have the changes made at the pole. While waiting for the truck to arrive, he began the process in the house.
About 1.5 hours later (and still no sign of the other guy), we were ready to fire up the RG. The system synched up and we began powering up the STB's so they could get their updates. Within 30 minutes, all three televisions were up -- two set for 720p HD and one standard. The installer indicated if there were no unusual instances of freezing, pixelating, etc., on the HD sets within the next two weeks to go ahead and switch them over to 1080p.
We next set up the UVerse Elite DSL connection by plugging in my laptop directly to the RG. Once connectivity was established, the installer showed us some additional features available to us at the Yahoo portal (including the ability to set recordings from afar) went through all of the features of the STB's and remote. We signed off on the installation, the installer assured me the truck roll to switch wiring at the pole would still occur and he departed. As soon as he was down the street, I modified my existing wireless router \ internal LAN to function in DMZ Plus mode and got the rest of my machines on line (including a Windows Home Server that requires remote access).
About ten minutes later, another tech knocked on the door to let me know I would lose sync while he made the switch. Within 30 minutes, everything was back online. I've not had any loss of connectivity or signal since then.
Total installation time -- 5.5 hours.
SD quality is leaps and bounds above what Comcast could ever provide. HD quality is at least as good as what the cable provider had (especially after configuring the two HD STB's for 1080p about a week afterwards). I get more stations, more HD programming and more functionality (love the whole house DVR!) at a better price.
I had AT&T Elite DSL prior to the change-over. Although latency is slightly higher due to the interleaving, the speeds are much better without the overhead inherent to ADSL. I regularly run speeds of 5570 Kbps down and 927 Kbps up (which is helpful when connecting to my WHS).
I have had no need for Technical Support, my connection is rock solid for three plus weeks, I am much happier with UVerse than I ever was with Comcast and I will probably recommend UVerse to friends and family.
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Updated 9/27/09:
Ten months into the new service and I'm still very pleased. The only problem I've had was an oddity with a HUGE amount of corrected blocks appearing in the Remote Gateway diagnostics but after reviewing a few threads in the AT&T UVerse forum here on the site, I determined a reboot of the RG would clear it up.
Speeds continue to be consistent and TV quality is still better than what the previous cable provider offered. The whole house DVR is also a nice feature; I'm looking forward to future system improvements in the works. Unfortunately, since my LAN is running on a separate router/gateway, I am unable to take advantage of the MediaShare functionality but it really isn't too big a loss anyway.
I will continue to recommend UVerse to friends and family.
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