AT&T U-verse → Review AT&T U-Verse

if someone with U-verse would like to email a review of the product to reviews@dslreports.com we can setup an entry for it so future reviews can be done more easily.

Well, I saw U-Verse for the 1st time today. I've got to say it's still TV service but the picture was very good, menu options were easy to use a plentiful, and the channel changed quicker than cable and much quicker than satellite. Although HD is available the one I saw was SD. The only issue was with local channel 4 in that it wasn't that great of a picture or would lose it all together. Since this is broadcast over the air to an antenna outside the VHO, I'm guessing this was because of the way the transmitter was angle/tuned or how the receiving antenna was angled/tuned. Should be an easy fix in the future. The service came with 1 DVR and 4 satellite receivers each with their own remote with the ability to watch /record 4 streams of video. It's possible although I didn't try it to have a picture in picture type review of what's playing in up to 8 different on screen displays which sounded very slick. The 8 channel images would only work on 1 TV at a time though. The DSL was the 6Mb stream and stayed true to speed until all 4 TV's were watching a streamed video and then it did drop but still plenty quick for the average users.

Bottom line...
Pro's:
1) Great SD picture quality (It's digital just not HD-even though HD is available)
2) Easy and feature packed menu options
3) Quick channel changes.
-As more customers in the neighborhood select this service the channel changing will get faster since some of the channels won't be sitting at the VHO to select but rather already at the CO or VRAD.

Con's:
1) One local channel was being broadcast poorly there for provided poorly. Expect that to be corrected in due time.
2) Minor DSL slow down when all 4 Streams being sent but still plenty fast for average internet user.

Like Cable modem, satellite, and DSL when they were 1st introduced there were a lot of glitches. Although they will probably have some glitches as this is a new product for AT&T I really think the glitches will be fixed by software upgrades.

Channel 4 problem has been corrected and I saw the channel line up and it's pretty darn complete. Only 1 station that I wanted that it doesn't have.

There's a user in att-northeast... got in installed last night.. pictures are inlucuded.

»[info] It's Here! U-Verse

Here is a review of U Verse that I just did. I would post it here however its huge and has almost 80 picures.

»www.satelliteguys.us/sho ··· ?t=87544

nevermind

Thanks for the review. It is nice.

Do you know if they do inside wiring as well?

After almost a week, I feel that I will return the Uverse equipment.

Why?

Their highest internet connection is about 1/2 of my TWC connection.

Less important but a factor, three local HD stations not available.

This is the deal killer- Only one HD channel can be recorded or watched at a time, regardless of # of boxes. I have two TWC boxes and can record 4 of any type of programming.

BTW, it took 4 days to get the HD working properly. It took a return of a tech. Turns out that there is way to fully reboot, but the phone techs did not know it.

I am probably going shock them when I call to have it removed.

They themselves will not be back out, they will send you a box to mail back the equipment.

The one HD stream has been an issue since they brought HD into the mix in November, I still don't know why people are totally shocked to find out this quirk.

Me either, it's well stated...

Is it not possible two feed to DSL connection to one premises and temporarily fix the one HD stream until a more realistic solution could be found?

Att is going to lose subscribers if they don't get to it right away.

I've had U-verse for most of a week.

They ran new Cat5e for my installation, in part because it was very easy to do in my case. In total they spent 5-6 hours, including running a new line drop from the telephone poll. (Old neighborhood.) The line tested at 73Mbps, with the node just under 1,000 feet away. Mine was the first installation on that node here in Ann Arbor.

The 6M/1M Elite Internet service has been pretty nice. 6M/1M is better than Comcast's 8M/768K for my purposes, and it's cheaper. I still want FiOS-like bandwidth though.

I was only moderately impressed with the TV service when using a SDTV. It looks good, granted, but it's still just television. After picking up a LG 24" LCD monitor with HDMI input from Best Buy (on sale this week) and plugging it in, WOW! Big difference. The UI takes advantage of the higher resolution screen to display much more program information. The HD channels look great. Even the SD channels look surprisingly good on the HD display. The settop box does a very good job of upconverting them. I consider a HDTV with HDMI or DVI (with a HDMI-to-DVI cable) to be a must-have for U-verse.

Of course, since the bandwidth-starved FTTN architecture limits you to watching/recording 1 HD channel at a time, U-verse is too crippled for multiple-TV households to seriously consider. I can't imagine that the incremental cost of doing the job right would have killed AT&T and they're going to have to come back and run fiber within the next several years anyhow. Such penny-wise, pound-foolishness is maddening. I bought Verizon stock in my IRA when it was knocked down by shortsighted carping about FiOS's capital cost. Smart managers take the long view and know that the stock will take care of itself.

I've got a 4-port HDMI switchbox on order from Monoprice:
»www.monoprice.com/produc ··· 0&style=
Along with HDMI-to-HDMI and HDMI-to-DVI cables. That will let me share the new monitor with the DVR, my two PCs, and have a port left over. Had I thought of this a bit sooner I could have used the switch with my Samsung 24" LCD and a HDMI-to-DVI cable. (I was going to buy a component cable to use with the LG until I noticed the switch.) Monoprice is extremely well rated:
»www.resellerratings.com/ ··· onoprice
That stuff should arrive on Tuesday. Perhaps a proper A/V receiver would be a better solution but this is way cheaper.

I have been using Uverse for about a week. Overall I like it very much, but there are a few negatives they need to address. I guess it is easier to remember what I don't like rather than what I do like.

Positives: I like the quick channel change, and the PIP preview. I like 4 recordings at once. I like the features that they have promised are coming soon (Control of the DVR from any tuner, the ability to view photos on my TV from the computer). I like the ability to schedule recordings from my computer desktop.

Negatives:

No Caller ID on the TV! This seems like something a telephone company could deliver pretty easily.

You have to be pointing the remote directly at the tuner. We had the tuner on a shelf next to the television. At night, the LEDs put out a bunch of light so I moved it to the floor. We had to point the remote at the tuner to get it to work, so I had to move it back onto the shelf. It is hard to get the DVR to see the remote when I am about 20 feet away.

The tuner lags behind when browsing the list of programs. I have noticed the esp. on the DVR unit. It will keep up for 3-4 selections then it pauses. I keep hitting the down arrow, and it "remembers" them, so that when it does start moving in the menu again, it jumps like 5 more slots. Very irritating. It seems to happen every time after about 3-4 button pushes.

Uverse tuners cannot schedule an "autotune". Dish network (my recently discontinued provider) had the ability to "autotune" without recording. All of the tuners could do this whether they were DVR or not. I like to setup to tune in the morning to my favorite news channel, so that when I do turn on the TV, it is on the right show.

When I browse the program list and select a program to record, it notifies that it has scheduled the recording, then it pops back to the program I was watching, not back to the program list. This program is frequently nowhere near where I was browsing in the program list. It should just pop me back to where I was browsing in the menu, not back to the last program I was watching.

It only has 1 "favorites" list, and it is somewhat difficult to access. Dish had 5 lists, so I could set one up for just local channels, one for the kids favorite channels, one for the adults favorite channels, etc. Dish cycles through the lists as you push the guide button. As I recall, Uverse requires you to push menu, then downarrow to the "favorites" list and select it, then begin browsing. Not very convenient. Granted there could be a shortcut I am not familiar with.

As I said above, overall, I like uverse very much, I just hope they can correct some of these shortcomings.

Sfong

Update to my review: at a distance, HDTV looks great on my 24" monitor. Up close, the picture quality is awful. AT&T has the compression rate set WAY too high. Comcast via my OnAir GT USB HDTV tuner looks much better, close to over-the-air quality. I can compare Discovery HD Theater on each service and the difference is night and day. Switching from HDMI to component input just made text a bit fuzzier.

That settles it. When my 2 months of free TV are up I'm canceling the TV portion of my subscription. Copper-to-the-home is just too bandwidth starved for HDTV. (Edit: there's a report on uverseusers.com that AT&T is rolling out a codec update that improves HD video quality. We'll see.)

I did discover something neat: my new LG 24" monitor has a headphone jack that lets me listen to HDMI audio. Handy. One oddity: I had to set Picture | CSM to sRGB via the LG's on-screen controls so that PC video displayed correctly, otherwise I had to crank up brightness to uncomfortable levels. Not sure what that's about. The new Monoprice HDMI switch works, not as well as having multiple digital inputs built into the monitor would (the Windows PC thinks the monitor is unplugged and bells its displeasure) but it is effective.

^ well, that is the most damning review I've seen...once HDTV adoption reaches critical mass, AT&T is going to be out high and dry with their aging copper.

I do not like AT&T Uverse and have gone back to cable (actually, we never turned it off). Here's why:

Cons:

1) With the cable HD the picture seems to be much more crisp and jumps off the screen. While AT&T has the same resolution, but seems to be lacking something in the "jump of the screen " category.

2) The internet speed with comcast has gone up to 6 MBPS. While AT&T is still at 5MBPS(still plenty fast), there still seems to be more lag in it, from the little bit of time that we've been using it. Actual download speeds show that comcast is more than twice as fast

3) Every once in a while, on shows that we record in HD the sound is "off" from the video by a split-second. This is very annoying. Also pixelation during sport events.

4) Channel flipping has a slight delay, so if you press channel down once, and then again because you didn't think it would take, then the system catches up and you overflipped and have to start over.

5) The biggest complaint that I have by far is that you can only have ONE HD stream coming into your house at the same time. One. period. So if you are recording one show in HD, you can watch another show, you just can't watch it in HD. You CAN record up to 4 shows at the same time, but only ONE of them can be in HD. Soooooooo stupid...

6) No PIP like Time warner other than the sloooow guide

7) the "strech/zoom" functions do not work well at all. Luckly, my tv has a really good autofit system

8) Time warner remote has a day+/- button useful for scrolling the guide to select something for recording. Not only does ATT not have this, there is a significant lag to the guide, the guide doesn't show any programming past 12hrs or so later than current...

9) Every now and then when you turn on the system, it has to reboot or something, taking up to a few minutes. Not that often, but annoying when it happens

Pros:

1) You can set DVR to record shows from any internet connected PC, but it still has the same lag as if you were there.

2) Its cheaper

3) You get more channels, including the "west-coast" channels. I originally switched because I could not bear not having NFL network with Time Warner. Well, now comcast is carrying it on their sports package, so there goes that reason...

4) The remote is very easy to set up to work with other devices, unlike the Time Warner/Comcast remote. Volume control always stays on "Tuner", etc...

thats it. My advice is to stay away from AT&T, at least through the end of the year when they say they will open up the pipe to allow more than one HD stream. Even then, keep your current provider turned on for a month or so, so that you can compare them and tell ATT "thanks, but no thanks."

I have a few comments/questions for your cons.

2) U-verses' elite package is infact 6/1, what exactly do you mean by 5? Are you referring to speed tests? I seem to test out around 5.8Mb/s, which is close enough to 6 if you factor in net traffic. With TWC/Comcast, I was lucky to even test near 5, maybe just me though.

6) There is PiP browsing, but I agree, there is no 'true' form of PiP, which I hope they fix.

8) The FF/RW buttons act as day+/- in the guide. I can go almost two weeks forward in the guide, what exactly do you mean by "doesn't show any programming past 12hrs"?

Fortunately, what holds true with cable in your vicinity doesn't necessarily match the experience of all of us.

This is my test on U-Verse:



I should have done a test on TW, but I can tell you the down-speed was about the same however, the up-speed on U-Verse is 2 to 3 times faster.

My U-Verse experience hasn't been so bad other then the lag in channel changes, but looks like it is getting better.

I went in to it knowing its new technology being brought to the home and there might be some issues and that is something you have to deal with being on the cutting edge(I know its not cutting edge, but for home use I consider it cutting edge because its new to home).

This is something that everyone here should have an idea about and If you are not willing to deal with it, then don't get it. Wait until most all the bugs are worked out.

But for the future advancements they are going to deploy, I want to be there when they come out. I do like the idea to be able to select programs to record on my DVR from my computer even when I am not at home. I heard about whole home DVR and some other features that I cannot remember at this time.

If you drop the uverse and keep just the dsl, your upload speed would drop from 1M to the seven hundred something speed of their normal dsl.

No, if you keep the U-verse VDSL, then you will still be on 1Mb/s upload.

If you drop the U-verse VDSL completely (internet and TV) and go back to ADSL, then yes, the upload will go back to normal ADSL speeds.

Wanted to add my opinion. Signed up for Uverse and had it installed yesterday. After 5 1/2 hours after the install I switched back 3 of the 4 boxes to Comcast Digital. I kept the Uverse DVR hooked up to the main TV just to fiddle with it and compare it to my Comcast DVR which is now running along side it on the main TV, before I set the record for fastest Uverse cancellation

There was 1 major issue right off the bat that the sales folks don't tell you over the phone and that's the quantity and quality of FREE on demand programs. There's a good reason for it and that's because it's practically non-existent when compared to Comcast Digital. That was the main Uverse killer for me. Having 2 kids and each liking Caillou, Barney, Sponge Bob, etc and not being able to call it up from any TV was a kill joy. (well, I have to mention that there was 1 Spongebob episode I saw in their free section) I personally enjoy the FREE FearNet, History and Military programs with some being in HD, none of which is availabe on Uverse.

Additional Cons:

2) SD quality was about as good if not worse in most cases than Comcast Digital. (I'm in San Ramon, Ca) I was hoping it would be better since it was the second reason for me to switch. Pity, it wasn't. For your info, I have 1 1080i DLP, 1 1080P LCD, and 2 tube tv's all hooked up.

3) Pixelation, artifacts or packet loss. Whatever you want to call it, it happened too frequent for me. The DVR unit performed pretty well. The regular receivers on the other hand had an interesting problem I discovered. If someone is using the DVR unit, and you turn on another tv in the house, the regular receiver picture would pixelate more often than if the DVR was off. More often would be at least once every minute which is damn annoying. The interesting part occurs if you switch the regular receiver to watch the same SD channel as the DVR, the pixelation would practically go away, but not entirely. To further test this out I would then switch the channel on the DVR and the regular receiver picture would go back to pixelating more often. This occured on all of my regular receivers (I have 3 of them in addition to the DVR). This would seem to be an issue with the way the Gateway handles multi channel viewing or just a bad gateway. Overall just watching SD while other receivers are on, is like watching an almost excellent movie on your PC. It just doesn't have that smoothness.

4) Watching an HD channel from a regular receiver had way too much pixelation for me, to the point I just couldn't watch it anymore. The same box would play fine for the most part if watching an SD channel, and of course if it were the only receiver that was on. Swapping it out with the other receivers didn't fix the issue. Again maybe a gateway issue but interesting that it doesn't seem to have the same affect on the DVR unit.

Other issues:

I asked the Tech if I could power off the gateway to mount it elsewhere. I actually had 4 techs and 2 managers at my house at this time going over the install. One of the managers jumped in and said "No" right off the bat. I was thinking, so what will happen during a power outage? The tech then jumped in and said, well you can power it off but you might have to call tech support to get it synched up again or a line tech may have to come out to get it resynched. Wow, I thought, what happened to the good ol days of just turning your tv back on after the power goes off??

In any event I unplugged the unit this morning to see what would happen and sure enough after waiting over 10 minutes for the flashing red broadband light to turn green, it remained red. I called tech support and after 20 minutes, waiting on hold, and then the tech walking me through the web administration site of the gateway to make some minor changes we had the unit re-synched and working again. It turns out there is a firmware flaw in a lot of units where if set to Auto to determine how it's connected on the WAN and LAN side, it won't resync. You have to specify the type of cable/wire it's hooked to. My question to the tech was, I had 4 install techs and 2 managers at my house and even after I asked them about powering off my gateway they knew there was an issue and therefore must have known the fix for it, but yet they didn't bother to test it and make the simple corrections that I had to do today. Go figure.

Fast channel swapping is over rated and was never a selling point for me. There is still a slight lag between HD channels and a smaller lag between SD channels.

DVR unit control was so freaking laggy. I was laughing when the tech was trying to show me how to select a show for recording. I would press the record button and wait and then hit it again thinking it didn't receive the signal so we were constantly setting record on and off. I literally sat there and decided to count to 5 everytime I hit the record button just to make sure it was going to process it correctly. I guess they put the speed into the fast channel changes

Some Pros:
Menu/Interface was excellent and pleasant to look at, but of course there wasn't much content to navigate through on the On Demand side so it's like a nice Mercedes with no interior.

I would have to guess if given maybe another year that Uverse should have more of the kinks worked out and more content on the On Demand side. With additional features in the works like other folks mentioned, it should be at least a DirectTV killer, but I'm not going to pay for service in the hopes that current features will improve and future features will come around.

Hope this was helpful,
Kenny

i do not have att service and uverse is not yet available in my area but i must say..to everyone who is complaining it's time to stop. verizon fios went through the same growing pains when it rolled out 2 years ago. att will fix this in due time. be patient. newer technologies take time to perfect.

Except this is a crippled technological stopgap compared to FiOS (sorry, couldn't help m'self).

So are folks suppose to not make bad comments about a service and should only post good ones? How are folks suppose to make an educated decision on whether to go with a service or not if all comments are one sided? Reviews need both good and bad comments other wise the reviews section wouldn't be about reviews but more about free advertisement for the vendor

Of course AT&T is going to fix these issues, but folks need to know, that depending on what they're expecting there may be problems or shortcomings for them, and based on what their needs are, decide whether they should pay for this or just stick with their current provider until AT&T does fix these issue.

You may think that there are too many negative posts and that it isn't justified since Uverse is a new technology, but how is AT&T suppose to improve or fix these issues if no one were to complain that would deter other folks from signing up for their service?

Realize also I'm not bashing AT&T. I think they'll have a great service once they work out the kinks and add more content. My neighbor next door actually works with them as a consultant on the Uverse project (We live in San Ramon, AT&T is down the steet). They're taking all feedback seriously and really want to improve the service, but they need the feedback. The more negative feedback the more they know they have an issue. It's just how things work, if you don't complain it won't get fixed

If they keep track of posts on »www.uverseusers.com and their own »utalk.att.com, they will see the ups and downs of the product real fast.

Its time to stop complaining?
They rush a half ass product, make statements that are not true and then are not sure how to fix it... yea I am good with that, I love wasting my money for crap service.

AT&T may fix it over the next few years and it may be ok, but my experience with them was pretty bad and I don't care if they fix their problems or not I will never go back.

I just got mine installed today. Two installers (one training) and 4.5 hours later and everything seems ok. I have the U300 Elite. The following are my thoughts based upon a few hours of playing with the service.

Our apt building was built in 1939. We have one TV in the bedroom, one TV tuner card (WinTV-Radio) in the living room desktop computer, and a USB 2.0 PVR on a laptop in the living room. I had coaxial coming into the living room and split into three other coaxial lines. One ran to the bedroom tv and the other two when to the computers.

When the installer looked at our phone jack, he was surprised to see two wires instead of four. He looked in the box attached to the building and saw a lot of other apts wired the same way. He then stated that they couldn't install it because they use the second line, black and yellow wires, to run Uverse and Lightspeed, while Red and Green are for voice. I asked, "What about the jack in the bedroom. Some years ago, someone ran a phone line with 4 wires from the box, along side of the building, and to the bedroom. He pretty much refused to run a CAT5 to the STB to the bedroom and laptop. Only the desktop STB got CAT5. Each STB is connected to their TV/Tuner cards by RCA or S-video.

The platinum glove guy came out too and showed me how to use the TV. I have never even heard of any cable or satellite company sending someone out to show a customer how to use a DVR, Guide, or service. He was very professional and taught very well.

The picture looks great! I have a hard time digesting digital artifacting. I would rather see snow or ghosting more than pixelization. If there is almost any kind of motion, pixelization occurs. The channels do switch fast. The UI is very intuitive...but it can be VERY slow at times. When I saw something on the guide, it was very easy to set it to record. I like the size and position of the remote buttons. I live being able to see what is going to be on the current channel by pushing the right arrow. I like the back button.

Some things I don't like: The Series recording is ALMOST like Tivo's Season Pass. It can look for show on any day at any time, but only on the specified channel. By default, it only records at specific time. I have to actually edit the setting which is a pain. I had their Elite ADSL. I got about 4988/623. Now I get 56xx/942. Of course, I really don't notice any speed upgrade unless I am uploading. Billing is on two different bills. Not only that, I don't see an option to "go paperless" like I have done with my voice AT&T bill. Also I get a message stating that I am not eligible to pay online. I can with my other AT&T bill. Maybe because I don't have a Uverse bill yet? If I log into my AT&T homepage or account manager, the uverse.att.com site will not let me log in. I log out of my AT&T homepage, uverse.att.com still won't let me log into it. It says that I am still logged into 'another AT&T management site.' So I clear all of my browser cookies and I can log in. Obviously, they need to have one central account manager or two sites that can set two different cookies. I can tell that paying the two bills are going to be a pain. I will probably just use my banks free bill pay. Another option would be to cancel my voice service...hehe.

There is actually an option to go paperless billing with U-verse.

If you go to the U-verse Central site (»uversecentral.att.com) and click on Change Billing Info, there will be an option to sign up for paperless billing.

Lol. After they came over, I just played with it for a few hours while I was cleaning up. I played with the site even less than that and I was tired. Like you said, the setting is pretty out in the open. I can't believe I missed it.

There are a few other things I forgot to mention. When the TV is connected to the box via coaxial, the volume is very low and the background his is high. Switching to RCA/S-Video, component , or HDMI solves those problems. I wish there was a button for the favorites on the remote. I wish that I could set a channel to my favorites through the guide. Also, I wish the box had a sleep timer...hehe.