said by trparky:I use HDMI and I have no issues.
You do have a problem if you care about 5.1 audio. U-verse does not currently output 5.1 audio over HDMI.
That, in turn, means you won't have the audio drop problem with HDMI, because drop outs only happen with 5.1 material. You can "disable" 5.1 output on optical by enabling sound effects, but you'll get stereo PCM.