| Can you see a difference: Charter HD Vs. AT&T U-Verse HD I currently have one of the older types of Magavox HD T.V.s thats not really a flat screen but is HD/Wide screen. I was wondering if you can tell any difference in the quality of HD when you have Charter HD and AT&T Uverse HD. I am using standard component cables. |
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Reviews:
 ·Charter
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1 edit | Depends on the area. Personally I'd get Directv.
I notice in another topic you said it seems like a big hassle...
I have Cable Internet with Charter, Satellite tv with Directv, phone with Vonage, and 3g internet/cell phones with At&t. I have Directv, At&t, and Vonage set to automatically withdrawl, and I pay charter every month manually (Like you I don't trust charter enough to set up auto withdrawls). It works just fine. |
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| I live in a condo....DirecTV is a haste to install. I also heard that with satelite the signal is bad during storms or when there is no direct view to the sky....clouds, etc.
having multiple companies drives me insane I want 1 bill for everything.
said by Metatron2008:Depends on the area. Personally I'd get Directv. I notice in another topic you said it seems like a big hassle... I have Cable Internet with Charter, Satellite tv with Directv, phone with Vonage, and 3g internet/cell phones with At&t. I have Directv, At&t, and Vonage set to automatically withdrawl, and I pay charter every month manually (Like you I don't trust charter enough to set up auto withdrawls). It works just fine. |
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Reviews:
·Charter
·Clearwire Wireless
| Direcv uses a better method then Dish, which is more resilent to weather. It still goes out in really bad storms, but not in clouds, or rain, just in extreme heavy rain or heavy snow.
And personally, I'd rather be paying for good service instead of just wasting money.
If your going to go with Charter for hd as well as internet, or at&t internet as wel as tv, you may as well send me that extra money. |
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Phatty
join:2000-05-10
Valley Park, MO | said by Metatron2008:..... If your going to go with Charter for hd as well as internet, or at&t internet as wel as tv, you may as well send me that extra money. Thats a very generic assumption you have that DirectTV is somehow magically loads cheaper than any of the alternatives... Everytime I look into Dish or DirectTV I can never get an offer that beats anything I pay at Charter.... It all depends on what services you have, and what channels you need on who has the better buy. Now if I wanted Multiple DVRs I do know that is something that Charter basically tries to discourage based on how much they charge for each DVR box you desire. But for my needs, nobody beats Charters pricing.
And for the Ops original question I have yet to see the two side by side... I have a feeling that Charters HD probably is going to be a higher bit rate than AT&T only based on the fact that AT&T is squeezing everything in such a little pipe. But this is just a guess, and I would bet that the majority of people couldn't tell a difference between any provider. |
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| reply to Metatron2008
actually I had Charter for cable(hd) and Internet and ATT landline for home phone (because a cell phone does not work really well in my place) and Sprint for my cell phone. I switched to ATT Uverse and now I am getting cable (HD) and Internet and VOIP home phone through 1 provider....AT&T U Verse
said by Metatron2008:Direcv uses a better method then Dish, which is more resilent to weather. It still goes out in really bad storms, but not in clouds, or rain, just in extreme heavy rain or heavy snow. And personally, I'd rather be paying for good service instead of just wasting money. If your going to go with Charter for hd as well as internet, or at&t internet as wel as tv, you may as well send me that extra money. |
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| reply to Phatty
I understand...I used to have Charter for my cable (HD) and Internet and than I got sick of Charter not giving me options for a "whole house DVR" and not being able to get 2 channels I love (NFL Network and Big Ten Network). I was getting actually an awesome price with Charter for what I was getting: cable HD, all the movie channels, DVR, and 10 meg Internet....all for $105/month.
said by Phatty:said by Metatron2008:..... If your going to go with Charter for hd as well as internet, or at&t internet as wel as tv, you may as well send me that extra money. Thats a very generic assumption you have that DirectTV is somehow magically loads cheaper than any of the alternatives... Everytime I look into Dish or DirectTV I can never get an offer that beats anything I pay at Charter.... It all depends on what services you have, and what channels you need on who has the better buy. Now if I wanted Multiple DVRs I do know that is something that Charter basically tries to discourage based on how much they charge for each DVR box you desire. But for my needs, nobody beats Charters pricing. And for the Ops original question I have yet to see the two side by side... I have a feeling that Charters HD probably is going to be a higher bit rate than AT&T only based on the fact that AT&T is squeezing everything in such a little pipe. But this is just a guess, and I would bet that the majority of people couldn't tell a difference between any provider. |
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Reviews:
·Charter
·Clearwire Wireless
1 edit | reply to Phatty
said by Phatty:said by Metatron2008:..... If your going to go with Charter for hd as well as internet, or at&t internet as wel as tv, you may as well send me that extra money. Thats a very generic assumption you have that DirectTV is somehow magically loads cheaper than any of the alternatives... Everytime I look into Dish or DirectTV I can never get an offer that beats anything I pay at Charter.... It all depends on what services you have, and what channels you need on who has the better buy. Now if I wanted Multiple DVRs I do know that is something that Charter basically tries to discourage based on how much they charge for each DVR box you desire. But for my needs, nobody beats Charters pricing. And for the Ops original question I have yet to see the two side by side... I have a feeling that Charters HD probably is going to be a higher bit rate than AT&T only based on the fact that AT&T is squeezing everything in such a little pipe. But this is just a guess, and I would bet that the majority of people couldn't tell a difference between any provider. I didn't mean cheaper as in packages ... Cheaper for what you GET in the packages.
Directv packages are usually more expensive then Charter, but Directv also has hundreds more hd channels. You get alot more for your money. |
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 BF69Premium
join:2004-07-28
Camden, TN | said by Metatron2008:Directv packages are usually more expensive then Charter, but Directv also has hundreds more hd channels. You get alot more for your money. Actually Directv pakages are CHEAPER than Charter and you get more channels.
Their 200 channel package is $61 a month. If you add HD it's $71
Chater's digtial package is $65 a month. If you add HD( but not HD Ultra ) it's $70. For $1 more you get a A LOT more SD and HD channels. |
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1 edit | reply to STLCompGuy
I agree with the premise that Sat providers beat the crap out of charter for HD. I'm personally w/ dish but I'm not especially loyal. I paid $99 for my install just so I wouldn't be locked into a Dish contract.
My grandpa has charter HD + the HD ultra view, and it leaves him with like 20 HD channels + HD locals. WIth Dish, I'd say we get at LEAST double, probably more like triple, that number of channels. It seems like every channel has an HD equivalent. I think DirecTV and Dish are probably just about neck and neck for HD at the present moment, though I would lean towards DirecTV more if you're a sports fan.
The idea that satellite goes out every time it rains is pretty much a myth. The technical term is called rain fade, and with our Dish, which we've had for about a year now, we don't see a loss of signal unless it's a really heavy downpour, and even then it only lasts for the worst of the worst part of the storm then comes back. Part of it has to do w/ how good your dish is aimed. Say you need a minimum of 30% signal strength to watch TV. If they aim your dish so that you have 99% signal strength, and you get a really good rain, let's say your signal drops by 50%. That leaves you 49% signal to work with still. But if your installer only peaked you to 75% strength, and it drops by 50 percentage points, then you're sunk.
I think we've lost signal twice in the last year that I can recall. |
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BF69Premium
join:2004-07-28
Camden, TN | said by matt314159: I think DirecTV and Dish are probably just about neck and neck for HD at the present moment, though I would lean towards DirecTV more if you're a sports fan. Other than Sunday Ticket what does DirecTv has that Dish doesn't? Also Dish has a HD only package. Their Turbo HD Gold package is $50 a month plus $5 for locals for a total of $55 a month. Both DirecTv and Charter could both learn from Dish in offering HD only packages. Especially DirecTv since they have more HD than Charter. Seriously if I have a HDTV and a HD version of a channel why would I want the SD version? |
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Reviews:
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1 edit | said by BF69:said by matt314159: I think DirecTV and Dish are probably just about neck and neck for HD at the present moment, though I would lean towards DirecTV more if you're a sports fan. Other than Sunday Ticket what does DirecTv has that Dish doesn't? Also Dish has a HD only package. Their Turbo HD Gold package is $50 a month plus $5 for locals for a total of $55 a month. Both DirecTv and Charter could both learn from Dish in offering HD only packages. Especially DirecTv since they have more HD than Charter. Seriously i't f I have a HDTV and a HD version of a channel why would I want the SD version? Tons of 24/7 RSNs. I don't totally count them as channels, but damned if they don't help when I get MLB EI!
I personally hate Dish. Really, it's the fact that Charlie gets rid of channels to add them. Didn't they get rid of Smithsonian recently? And lets not start with Voom.
Yeah, I gotta wait until early next year for more premium movie channels, but at least I won't be afraid that a fav channel of mine will disappear for a new one. |
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 John_WPremium
join:2000-04-25
Worcester, MA | reply to BF69
said by BF69:said by Metatron2008:Directv packages are usually more expensive then Charter, but Directv also has hundreds more hd channels. You get alot more for your money. Actually Directv pakages are CHEAPER than Charter and you get more channels. Their 200 channel package is $61 a month. If you add HD it's $71 Chater's digtial package is $65 a month. If you add HD( but not HD Ultra ) it's $70. For $1 more you get a A LOT more SD and HD channels. You forgot to add that if you add an HD HVR to the Charter package, the price goes up to $90.
Add an HD DVR to the Directv price and it only goes to $76. Which I think is a pretty decent value.
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Team Discovery--BBR Team Helix--Cuz I Care!! |
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Reviews:
 ·AT&T U-Verse
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1 edit | reply to BF69
said by BF69:Actually Directv pakages are CHEAPER than Charter and you get more channels. If you only have 1 or 2 TVs in your house, then yes, DirecTV will probably be cheaper than Charter. More than 2 TVs, however, and it's not so clear, as DirecTV charges $5/receiver/month for additional receivers. My parents and my in-laws both have 5 TVs at their houses. They'd be paying DirecTV an additional $20/month for receivers where they currently pay nothing for analog expanded basic service.
To answer the original question, I've had both Charter HD and Uverse HD. I like the HD picture on Charter better -- the picture on Uverse was very dark, so anything with dimly lit scenes was very hard to watch. I've since found out there was some sort of buried setting we could have tweaked on the Uverse receiver that may have fixed the issue, but my wife hated Uverse (the DVR was terrible ... crashed, wasn't user-friendly, lacked basic functionality/features), so we switched back to Charter and got an HD Tivo. I liked the HD lineup on Uverse a lot better though. Charter's HD lineup is pathetic. |
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BF69Premium
join:2004-07-28
Camden, TN | said by goillini:said by BF69:Actually Directv pakages are CHEAPER than Charter and you get more channels. If you only have 1 or 2 TVs in your house, then yes, DirecTV will probably be cheaper than Charter. More than 2 TVs, however, and it's not so clear, as DirecTV charges $5/receiver/month for additional receivers. If you want HD or digital in all the rooms you'll need a box for each TV and Charter charges $5 per box so that's the same in my book. If you just need basic you could just do OTA in the other rooms |
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Reviews:
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| said by BF69:If you want HD or digital in all the rooms you'll need a box for each TV and Charter charges $5 per box so that's the same in my book. If you just need basic you could just do OTA in the other rooms Expanded basic typically offers about 70 of the most popular cable channels to any cable-ready TV, with no need for a box. So, for most people, they don't need or want a cable box in every room, and expanded basic offers many more channels than OTA. But I'm guessing you already know that, it just doesn't fit the point you want to make. Sorry to muddle things up with facts.
Cable's analog lineup is one of the only competitive advantages cable has over satellite and IPTV services like Uverse, even if you don't care to acknowledge it. |
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BF69Premium
join:2004-07-28
Camden, TN
2 edits | said by goillini:said by BF69:If you want HD or digital in all the rooms you'll need a box for each TV and Charter charges $5 per box so that's the same in my book. If you just need basic you could just do OTA in the other rooms Expanded basic typically offers about 70 of the most popular cable channels to any cable-ready TV, with no need for a box. So, for most people, they don't need or want a cable box in every room, and expanded basic offers many more channels than OTA. But I'm guessing you already know that, it just doesn't fit the point you want to make. Sorry to muddle things up with facts. Cable's analog lineup is one of the only competitive advantages cable has over satellite and IPTV services like Uverse, even if you don't care to acknowledge it. I'm not sure why you want to be a jerk about things. If you want to talk about muddling facts. How about you bringing up the extra boxes for DirecTv then saying you won't need them for Charter. Which is UNTRUE if you're comparing apples to apples, but you don't. You're comparing apples and oranges to make the "facts" fit YOUR point of view. So pot meet kettle.
As far as the 70 channels? Yeah well let's see, expanded basic form me goes from 2-71. Ok that's 70. Well except 8 and 16 don't exist. Ch 8 used to have a FoX station but they removed it a few months back( thanks Charter ). Good thing I can get it OTA. So that's 68. Ch 3 has local real estate ads. I'm not counting that. 19 and 22 have Charter previews for PPV which if you only have basic or expanded basic is kind of pointless. They don't count either. So that's 65 not 70. Over the past 2 years Charter has taken at least 5 channels from expanded basic to digital tier. Disney XD, G4, GSN, SoapNet, WE all used to be on analog expanded basic. Not are on digital. To think this won't continue is foolish. If you get a notice saying Charter is adding several HD channels you can be damned sure some analog channels are going to the digital tier.
From your post these others rooms are basically guest rooms not used often. If they were you'd have boxes in them. like your guests can't "put up with" OTA for a night or 2. Do they pay your bill?
What's your excuse going to be when in a couple of years Charter is all digital?
said by goillini:Expanded basic typically offers about 70 of the most popular cable channels to any cable-ready TV, with no need for a box. You know how much that sounds likes something a salesperson would say or what you'd hear on a commerical? Seems like we've got ourselves a Charter employee posting here as "regular" person people. Me thinks you've memorized the script bit too much. |
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Reviews:
·AT&T U-Verse
·AT&T DSL Service
| said by BF69:If you want to talk about muddling facts. How about you bringing up the extra boxes for DirecTv then saying you won't need them for Charter. Which is UNTRUE if you're comparing apples to apples, but you don't. You're comparing apples and oranges to make the "facts" fit YOUR point of view. So pot meet kettle. What part of this is confusing to you? With Charter, you can get approximately 70 channels on any TV in your house without a box. There is no comparable service from DirecTV -- that was my point. There is no apples-to-apples comparison. Charter offers an analog cable-ready service that some people with lots of TVs like. DirecTV does not offer this service. Is it a reason to pick Charter over DirecTV? It depends on how your household uses TV. As I said in my original post, if you only have a couple TVs, DirecTV is probably a better deal. Especially if you want HD, as DirecTV has way more HD channels than Charter.
said by BF69:As far as the 70 channels? ... [rambling] So that's 65 not 70. Oh, 65 instead of "about 70," like I said. Those 5 channels totally change the game. Just go ahead and disregard my previous post.
said by BF69:Over the past 2 years Charter has taken at least 5 channels from expanded basic to digital tier. Disney XD, G4, GSN, SoapNet, WE all used to be on analog expanded basic. Not are on digital. To think this won't continue is foolish. If you get a notice saying Charter is adding several HD channels you can be damned sure some analog channels are going to the digital tier. Hmm. I got a note in the mail today announcing 4 new HD channels here in Madison, WI, but no notice that channels were moving to digital basic. There is indeed a trend toward moving channels to the digital tier, and some systems like Comcast Chicago have eliminated analog expanded basic altogether. That said, it's not yet clear whether other cable operators like Charter will get rid of analog expanded basic in the immediate future. There are other ways to make room for larger HD lineups and faster Internet speeds using SDV and DOCSIS 3.0, which would preserve at least some of the analog line-up. I think the smarter cable operators will hold off on eliminating analog expanded basic for now, though I won't be surprised if it continues to slowly shrink. Even if it was to shrink by a third, it would still be a very useful service to many people.
said by BF69:From your post these others rooms are basically guest rooms not used often. If they were you'd have boxes in them. like your guests can't "put up with" OTA for a night or 2. Do they pay your bill? If you read the post, it was my parents and my in-laws. I "only" have 2 TVs, and a TV tuner card on my computer. My parents have a TV in the living room, family room, guest room, master bedroom and my sister's bedroom. The only one not used on a daily basis is the one in the guest room. Same goes for my in-laws, who have one in the living room, family room, kitchen, office, bedroom and the basement where they have exercise equipment (I forgot -- they have one more in the master bath so my father-in-law can have HLN on in the morning, so that's 7 TVs. Yeah, it's a little rediculous, but whatever, it's his house.). They're happy with having a cable box for one TV and expanded basic on all other sets. My point is that just as there are lots of folks for whom DirecTV's super-sweet HD lineup will be the deciding factor, there are other folks who enjoy having cable TV in multiple rooms in their house and may not want to pay $5/month/room for the priviledge.
said by BF69:What's your excuse going to be when in a couple of years Charter is all digital? I'm no fan of Charter's. I think I slam on them as much as the next guy. I wish we had a better cable company here, and that I didn't have too many trees to get DirecTV. Just because I disagree with you doesn't mean I'm a Charter fanboy. |
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Reviews:
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| reply to goillini
said by goillini:said by BF69:Actually Directv pakages are CHEAPER than Charter and you get more channels. If you only have 1 or 2 TVs in your house, then yes, DirecTV will probably be cheaper than Charter. More than 2 TVs, however, and it's not so clear, as DirecTV charges $5/receiver/month for additional receivers. My parents and my in-laws both have 5 TVs at their houses. They'd be paying DirecTV an additional $20/month for receivers where they currently pay nothing for analog expanded basic service. To answer the original question, I've had both Charter HD and Uverse HD. I like the HD picture on Charter better -- the picture on Uverse was very dark, so anything with dimly lit scenes was very hard to watch. I've since found out there was some sort of buried setting we could have tweaked on the Uverse receiver that may have fixed the issue, but my wife hated Uverse (the DVR was terrible ... crashed, wasn't user-friendly, lacked basic functionality/features), so we switched back to Charter and got an HD Tivo. I liked the HD lineup on Uverse a lot better though. Charter's HD lineup is pathetic. Charter also charges $5 a receiver if you get HD, And charter charges an extra $15 for each dvr. |
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Reviews:
·Charter
·Clearwire Wireless
| reply to goillini
said by goillini:said by BF69:If you want HD or digital in all the rooms you'll need a box for each TV and Charter charges $5 per box so that's the same in my book. If you just need basic you could just do OTA in the other rooms Expanded basic typically offers about 70 of the most popular cable channels to any cable-ready TV, with no need for a box. So, for most people, they don't need or want a cable box in every room, and expanded basic offers many more channels than OTA. But I'm guessing you already know that, it just doesn't fit the point you want to make. Sorry to muddle things up with facts. Cable's analog lineup is one of the only competitive advantages cable has over satellite and IPTV services like Uverse, even if you don't care to acknowledge it. This is a subject of HD, and you're talking about sd channels?
You should read what people are talking about before talking. |
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