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Review by starfighter 
member for 12.4 years, 125 visits, last login: 2.8 years ago
lodged 5.3 years ago
 Valencia,Los Angeles,CA
 $89 per month about 5 days "installer was thorough in searching for signal quality problems, and arrived within the 2 hour appointment window" "couldn't figure out how to hookup a DVD player in series with a receiver" "line speeds are very close to advertised, and picture quality is great. A good deal (for the first 6 months at least)."
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The installation went reasonably smooth, and took about 4 hours to complete. The tech wasn't very knowledgeable outside of the AT&T side of the install, and needed a little help getting things right (like hooking up the DVD player in series with one receiver, and connecting the receiver to a switcher on another station). The units came up without a fuss, and everything worked the first time. A few line quality problems were noticed, but swapping out a few filters cured this. We got the U400 package plus 6 Mb internet for $89.95 a month, and HD channels are included for a year free of charge. The U400 package also includes AT&T nationwide wifi service free of charge, but I have not looked into that yet. Having to have a receiver for each TV, and being limited to 3 isn't an issue for us, although I can see it might be for some people. The documentation on their hardware is lacking, but this is typical for AT&T. We were using Time Warner prior to our move here, and so far this seems like a better setup. Every time it rained or the wind blew real hard we had to reboot our Time Warner cable modem, a real PIA in the winter here in Southern California.
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 Review by eric_n_dfw
member for 11.5 years, 580 visits, last login: 174 days ago
updated 5.4 years ago
- Euless,Tarrant,TX
- $69 per month
- about 10 days
- "Painless install, rock solid DSL connection, good price"
- "TV quality can degrade with high motion & DVR needs some UI enhancements"
- "Great DSL, crappy DVR."
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** UPDATE 12/24/07 **
Just cancelled my UVerse TV service and, aparently, I get to keep the internet connection! SWEET! Like I've said before, the only real down side of UVerse is the *awful* DVR software but their DSL link is rock solid. I've reactivated my DirecTV Tivo so now I have the best of both worlds - FTTN DSL and my beloved, mod'ed up DTivo ;o)
(I'll update my monthly cost when I get my next bill)
** UPDATE 12/11/07 **
Internet connection awesome, but that DVR is still giving me headaches. This weekend it stopped recording a movie (iRobot on F/X) right at the climactic ending scene! (2:33:00 into a 3:00:00 show) I'm betting the DVR rebooted during the recording - I've seen it reboot in the middle of the day a couple of times, which is something my Tivo didn't do - it waiting 'till the middle of the night and tried to avoid any time slot where it was recording something I had told it to. I'm also really starting to miss my wishlists. I'm probably going to be calling AT&T and DirecTV today to see about switching to "regular" AT&T/Yahoo DSL and reactivating my DTivo.  (
** UPDATE 11/27/07 (4 weeks after install) **
The internet connection is rock solid - never any problems, especially since I ran a dedicated Cat5e line from the gateway/modem to my DVR. I probably will upgrade from the 3Mb service I'm on now to 6Mb but what I really would like is faster upload (1Mb just doesn't cut it for all the photos I post to Flickr and I want to start posting family videos for the grandparents to see)
The biggest problem I'm having is with the &$^*&#Q^$#$ DVR! I am really considering dropping Uverse over it. Last night I found that it didn't record both hours of a MythBusters special (usually that show is an hour). My DirecTivo never had that problem - you'd think that with AT&T providing the guide the thing would work as good as DirecTV's... aparently not. This, coupled with the problems I posted below, has be on the edge of going back to DTV and just swithcing to standard AT&T/Yahoo! DSL.
*** END 11/27/07 UPDATE ***
*** BEGIN ORIGINAL REVIEW ***
Coming from EarthLink with MyVoice I can't be happier about the combo of UVerse's internet and good old AT&T POTS phone service. I also switched from DirecTV with the Tivo based DVR, I'm a little less enthused with that change, but it's bearable.
INSTALL:
Luckily, I already have Cat5e ethernet run everywhere so the installers were able to just tap into my network and didn't have to drag any coaxial or ethernet cables anywhere. Install took about 60 minutes at most.
INTERNET:
I am now getting solid 3MB/1MB DSL (I may upgrade to 6MB/1MB, but I don't really need it right now) - the gateway stats seem to indicate that the raw speed available to the house is about 28MB/2MB. The only problem I had was, I believe related to the TV service - see "ODDITIES" below.
TELEVISION:
I don't have an HDTV but can attest that the SDTV quality is very good - I've only seen a couple of hicups and a little bit of macro-blocking while watching some NFL this weekend. I've watched 4 NHL games though, and all looked great. The DVR, however, is not quite so great; I'm coming from a DirecTV HDVR2 Tivo based DVR that I had hacked up quite a bit and increased drive space to about 240GB. The AT&T one works, but it lacks the UI polish that Tivo has and it also exhibts a lot of lag - so much so that you end up hitting the remote key's twice because you're not sure if it registered, only to end up double-clicking that button. I'll probably post a review of it on my blog somethime soon and will updated this with that link. The ability for it to record 4 SD shows at the same time is a very welcome improvement to my Tivo though. AT&T promises some software updates over the next year, hopefully some of the shortcomings will be addressed.
PHONE:
Ok, UVerse doesn't provide phone service, (although the gateway does have a couple of phone output RJ11 jacks that are covered with a clear plastic stickers so I'm guessing a VoIP solution is in the works), but I had to drop EarthLink MyVoice - not that I'll miss it - so I went back to POTS from AT&T. Not much to say about it, it just works.
ODDITIES:
I started to get a some really bad slowdowns the first couple of evenings, seemingly coinciding with watching the Dallas Stars hockey games in a time-shifted mode (lagging real time a bit). The video wasn't having any breakup or anything, but my DSL speed tests were showing as low a 22Kbs! We also were having problems with our 2 laptops keeping connection to my Airport Express WAP. I disconnected that WAP and enabled the one built into the AT&T / 2Wire gateway and have had absolutely no problems since. I then re-installed the Airport Express but am using it as a music streaming receiver for iTunes only which is working fine. My theory is that all of the multicast traffic that the TV traffic uses is flooding the Airport Express. I'll probably fire up ethereal or something some day to verify that, but the frantic blinking of my network switch seems to support it. If that's the case, I will probably drop another dedicated Cat5e line to my DVR and isolate that traffic from my main LAN with a router. (I've been wanting to upgrade my data network to 1000x switches anyway, this could me a good excuse!)
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Review by fuzzywayne
member for 9.3 years, 119 visits, last login: 4.8 years ago
updated 5.4 years ago
- San Antonio,Bexar,TX
- $29 per month
- about 6 days
- "Good wireless modem; nice upload speed"
- "ATT doesn't let you know U-verse is available"
- "Ask about U-verse, could give you better service for same price"
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I just switched from RoadRunner cable to ATT U-verse. The price difference was about twenty dollars a month, for what I consider comparable service. One nice benefit about U-verse: a free wireless modem (2-Wire 3800HGV-B). The signal strength is actually better than my old wireless router, a pleasant surprise.
Installation was okay. The installation tech was pretty helpful in answering my questions. The process was fairly painless as well. He just modified one phone outlet and connected the modem there. Apparently you can connect the modem through the cable system as well, but our cables are occupied with the television service.
Actually, the biggest problem I encountered was finding out whether U-verse was available. Apparently many of the regular ATT customer service reps don't know about U-verse; you have to speak to somebody in the U-verse team, and they can give you the right information. I was elated when they told me U-verse internet was available, since it'll save me a bundle of moolah.
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Review by obricko
member for 6.1 years, 6 visits, last login: 2 years ago
lodged 5.4 years ago
- Westland,Wayne,MI
- $140 per month
- about 7 days
- "Price, Up / Down Speed, equipment, HD Channels"
- "Pixelation of HD, Pausing of HD, No Multi Room DVR, No HD on demand"
- "for my region their price unbeatable!"
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Being a new technology I knew there were going to be growing pains with Fiber. after 2 months in the service has been pretty solid. The HD channels are good quality compared to WOW and ComCast, however there is some pixelation and stuttering durring most programing however this tends to be minimal for the most part. Durring shows that I would assumer have a higher viewing audience these problems seem to get worse. The worst I saw this was durring the OSU vs. U of M game where we saw these problems every few minutes.
I was estatic to find out that 3 boxes would be included 1 of which would be a DVR. The options are not as nice as tevo, however the hard drive space is ample.
Also the set-top-boxes seem to have some lag time while using the remote control! typing in the name of shows takes for ever! All of the other boxes i have used with other services have never had any noticable lag time. with uverse it's as bad as 2-3 seconds.
The internet speed that i have been seeing since I changed has been great, with average downloads around 600 kbs. And the speedtest.net results are right on part with the advertised specs of 6 down 1 up.
The changes I would like to see are:
-More Tivo like options for DVR (IPTV, greater serach options)
-DVR Viewing from non-DVR boxes in other rooms
-More Non-Premium On-Demand (NBC, CBS, ABC TNT etc...)
-HD On-Demand (currently not available)
-Improved Remote control speed
-upgrade firmware on set-top-boxes reboots necesary to get guide to show on screen.
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Review by ggarcia
member for 10.5 years, 1822 visits, last login: 34 days ago
updated 5.4 years ago
- La Porte,Harris,TX
- $104 per month
- about 7 days
- "Price, rock solid internet connection"
- "HD close, but not as good as Comcast. - Currently only allows 1 HD stream"
- "Great deal if you dont mind a few bugs as AT&T works out the software bugs"
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AT&T U-verse TVU200 - $59.00
AT&T Yahoo! Broadband Pro $30.00
Double pack Discount $10.00 credit
HD Technology Fee $10.00
Receiver Fee $5.00 (First three are free)
The internet is rock solid. Its never been this good with Comcast. The install took a while. I think the tech was new. I ordered the HD package, but he didn't even hook up the HD TV with HD cables... Luckly I had a HDMI cable. On the upside the tech left me with an extra usb wireless device for my laptop.
The DVR is much better than what Comcast has, however we find we have to reboot the AT&T boxes at least once a week. Guess this is due to running a Windows CE OS. I really like being able to schedule my DVR recordings via the web browser.
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Review by cjmazur
member for 9.7 years, 90 visits, last login: 13 days ago
lodged 5.4 years ago
- Cupertino,Santa Clara,CA
- $99 per month
- (month by month)
- "When it, works it works well"
- "poor service resolving issue"
- "The decision is still out"
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I had this service installed 8/1.
They spent a month and many visits to determine that the wifi I/F was not stable.
They replaced the RG. This were better but still not perfect. Every now and again I will get pixelization and freeze frame on the video and traffic loss on the Internet.
Here are a couple ping results:
Ping statistics for 216.252.120.29:
Packets: Sent = 9266, Received = 8311, Lost = 955 (10% loss),
Approximate round trip times in milliseconds:
Minimum = 20ms, Maximum = 753ms, Average = 26ms
Ping statistics for 216.252.120.29:
Packets: Sent = 24341, Received = 22556, Lost = 1785 (7% loss),
Approximate round trip times in milliseconds:
Minimum = 20ms, Maximum = 1196ms, Average = 23ms
They have continued to work with me and have provide reasonable credits to my account for lack of service.
They next plan is to put me on a different port at the "terminal"
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 Review by vetter
member for 10.1 years, 2537 visits, last login: 329 days ago
lodged 5.4 years ago
- North Olmsted,Cuyahoga,OH
- Contract price not specified.
- about 8 days
- "Great Value, Good Speed. Glad to Finally have a Choice!"
- "Only 1 HD Stream, No Whole House DVR."
- "Great Value and Don't Regret...Order Today!"
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Uverse install, sorry about the length but I know that I had a lot of questions before my install.
Contacted to have install done on Friday. Rep said a postcard would be mailed with install date/time.
Ordered U400 with Elite (6/1) Internet.
Received a phone call on following Thursday at 14:00 to confirm install. Tech would be there between 8-10. Dispatch called at around 8:30 that tech was on the way.
Tech arrived around 9:10. Surveyed the house and noted where the tv's were (living room, master bedroom) and the computers (living room- desktop) wireless laptop.
Left to go do the outside VRAD stuff. Later mentioned that I'm around 600-700 ft to VRAD.
Arrived back at 9:50 to begin inside work. Opened up all the wall telephone jacks to investigate.
Initially he tried syncing up the RG with the coax baylun (splitter that separates phone/network connection).
Couldn't get the RG to sync. Retested the line and all signals were good. RG would sync up when directly connected with no baylun. He contacted Tier 2 support and was on with the for quite a while. He swapped a couple different baylun/RG's but no luck.
Eventually, he had to place a separate box inside the wall plate box, then an additional box that had 2 jacks (1 for phone, the other for the RG).
That Worked!! It was now around 12:30.
The tech then proceeded to lay the new RJ-45 cabling. The carpet that we had was pretty old, so it was pretty easy to get up from the tack strips. The only issue I have is that in the master bedroom the tech cut across the middle of the room instead of following the wall. Now there is a big bump that you constantly walk over. I suspect this is because he was trying to quickly finish to get to his next job since he was running behind.
Tech finished running the wire to the master bedroom and the living room tv's. The wiring went from the RG to a junction box, then a patch cable to connect to the tv.
Placed the tv boxes. These are much smaller than my previous adelphia/TWC boxes. The dvr makes almost no noise which is a welcome change over my previous dvr. The only thing that seems to be missing is the presence of a clock. Not that you can't get the time using the info button, just seems to be something that most boxes have. I don't have any hdtv's so all are hooked up using composite/svideo cables.
I asked if they supply cables for hdtv(hdmi, component, etc) tech said no, it was customer responsibility.
Now on to the internet.
He initially indicated that he would give me a wireless adapter for my desktop, and my laptop has wireless built in.
You must first set up the account info. One of the security questions wasn't
filled in correctly (I know my data pretty well ) So another call into the help center. The help center tech was able to get us the info to get the account setup.
I was able to sync up to the wireless and everything was working. However, the
speeds were not good. Average was around 2.5 - 3 in wireless mode. Even had the laptop less than 1 foot away from the RG and still no better. Wired I was getting 5.5 - 6.0. Field Tech called Tier 2 again and had them run diagnostics to make sure
that everything was ok with the package (ie had I been properly setup for Elite). Everything was setup correctly.
I understand that wireless with wpa will slow down some, but loosing 2.5-3 mbps seems excessive!
Tech then asked what I wanted to do. I know that he didn't really want to run the extra cable, but the speed was just so much slower(I had about the same speeds on TWC). Why pay for the elite but only use pro level speeds?
The Tech quickly installed the patch cable to my desktop, and I was soon running at around 5.7 mbps. WhooHoo!
Tech finished up by going thru all the dvr functionalty and basic tv functions. 15:25
Tech cleaned up and quickly left as he had another job to go to.
Overall impressions...
The tech was superb! Very friendly, super knowledgeable, totally awesome. I bugged him with lots of questions. I was surprised that only 1 person came based on some of the other install posts, but was able to handle everything.
Make sure that you watch and instruct where you want the RJ-45 cable run. Even better, do it yourself.
The channels change much faster then my previous cable but there is a slight pause once the channel is selected.
Picture quality seems to be better, no tiling or pixilation.
Recording 4 DVR shows while watching a 5th is awesome! The ability to set up on-line is even better. I find it very quick to search for and set up shows to record. I also like the ability to start or end the shows at a different time.
Sometimes shows run long (ie most things on mtv) so it is great to add 5 minutes to catch the upcoming show details.
Also, for football games it works very nice to extend by 2 hr window. Saves me from having to tape the whole next game!
So many choices, I find that I must keep the listing guide handy. I will be working to set up my favorites list very soon.
I found it odd that the field tech had to go through the same phone tree and tier 2 tech support as customers. Basically since he had his field id the help desk tech "took him at his word" about issues. My field tech wasted quite a bit of time on hold just to speak
with someone. I would imagine if ATT wants the installs to be faster, this is one area to improve on.
Also, my field tech seemed a little frustrated that he had 2 jobs scheduled and that his second job wasn't transferred to someone else when it looked like he couldn't make the next appointment.
The firewall on the RG seems pretty weak, so I will be searching for a new firewall. I'm used to options for blocking activex, cookies, web site/url logging, etc.
I may use my old WRT54G (or if anyone has any suggestions...looking for under $100).
--Update
DVR went out on following Tuesday around 2 PM. After rebooting would just show a single gear page with a progress bar that didn't move. After a few minutes page would switch to a red X. After troubleshooting with Tier 2 support the other STB then failed. Tier 2 scheduled a repair appointment for the next day (since it was after 6:00 PM and no appointments were available for that day.) around 10:00 AM - 12:00 PM. I was impressed that they would be out the next day! Repair Tech called earlier around 9:15 and asked if he could start earlier. He switched out about 5 DVR boxes and worked for a few hours with Tier 2 Support, but nothing would work. He left around 1:00 due to another appointment and said he would return later that day. Yeah right?!, I've heard that
line before. To my great surprise he did show back up as promised! Again tried a couple of dvr's and nothing. Eventually he replaced the dvr,stb, and RG. Success!!
Again the repair tech was awesome. He was friendly and worked his butt off to fix my issue. When TWC came for a repair, if they couldn't fix in the allotted time slot, the tech would leave and I would have to schedule another time.
Although I lost all my dvr shows, I was pleasantly surprised that all the series information that I had setup was still there and the new dvr saw that info. WOW! So now when a dvr goes out, I don't have to try and remember all my series info. I'm super impressed by that!
I can't count the number of times my TWC dvr failed and I had to start all over.
To me it seems like ATT is working hard in this area to get and keep customers. It's great to have a choice and so far I don't regret it one bit. Everyone has been super helpful and overall made me feel more welcome and glad that I am a customer than TWC ever did.
Please feel free to ask any questions and I hope this is helpful!
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Review by Sancy1
member for 5.4 years, 3 visits, last login: 5.3 years ago
lodged 5.4 years ago
- Plainfield,Hendricks,IN
- $40 per month
- "Internet connectivity reliable"
- "HDTV picture not as good as Comcast"
- "Still fairly new, will give it more time before switching to something else"
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Install for whole U-Verse TV & Internet was about 6 hours...included some re-wiring but I didn't have to do any of it.
The internet is more reliable than Comcast but the HDTV isn't as good.
It's still new to the area so maybe it has some adjusting to do or bugs to be worked out. I will give it a little more time before I switch to something else.
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 Review by bassthumpa
member for 12.4 years, 3153 visits, last login: 3.9 years ago
updated 5.4 years ago
- Austin,Travis,TX
- $60 per month
- about 17 days
- "Very clear picture, quick channel change, easy to use"
- "None so far"
- "Awesome!"
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My installation was scheduled for 8-10 yesterday, but the tech was hung up on another job and didn't make it until around 2:30. That was no big deal for me, I know how that can be sometimes. Once he got to the house, I showed him the rooms and the attic entrance, he got right to work and did a great job. He installed Cat5 to my 3 rooms, and the jacks were very professionally and cleanly installed. Once he finished pulling wire and putting in jacks, the rest was a breeze. Plug in the gateway, then plug in the 2 boxes for my TV. A little while for the boxes to download software updates, and that was it. It took about 3 hours from start to finish.
The service itself is great in the day that I've played with it! The picture was VERY clear, much more so than the picture I got from Time Warner. I invited a couple of friends over to watch the football game, and they even commented on how clear it was. Data speeds on my PC were much faster, and having the additional upload bandwidth is a nice bonus.
Even though it's only the first day, I'm sure I'm gonna love this for the long run. The VRAD is right across the street from my house, so I'm in a prime spot for the service. I'll have to have my neighbors check it out, maybe they'll jump on board too.
Great job, AT&T!
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Review by lonebandit
member for 11.4 years, 1485 visits, last login: 35 days ago
lodged 5.4 years ago
- Oak Creek,Milwaukee,WI
- $99 per month
- about 60 days
- "Picture Quality even in SD"
- "Crappy customer provided equipment - runs windows CE!"
- "Not bad if your patient and have good troubleshooting skills"
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Lots of bumps in the road. I joined around Sept 2007. I have had a multitude of swap outs of hardware and even port changes (after my connection would mysteriously die each night around 12-1am). October was bad too. DVR that would record and show black when trying to play back. Maybe the video was being transmitted to the MOON ?
So..fast forward to November. I have seen 2 new software/firmware updates.
One for the gateway(Modem) and one for the set top boxes/DVR.
This fixed many issues. So far I have only had 1 show that would not play that was DVRd.
The internet version of U-Verse has for the most part been flawless but there is some oddball latency due to the interleaving AT&T has to do. That should only affect gamers and not normal surfers.
all in all, cust service has been great - billing was accurate to the PENNY and tech support was always helpful - even if they didnt know off hand what the issue is/was.
Keep in mind, that eventhough this product has been out for some time, its still dealing with 'growing' pains and one needs to be respectful of that.
But hands down, the picture quality - ALL CHANNELS are fully digital and very clear. Not like Time Worthless - where only a few are totally digital. Channel changing is much faster than TW but not 'instant' like AT&T claims it to be.
Overall, I would give them a 3 out of 5. They are getting better each month and trying very hard and they have to, to stay in the game! - TW never tried this hard for a customer.
I can honestly recommend them now - but sadly I think only 3% of WI people are even able to get U-Verse at this time.
LoneBandit
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