AT&T U-verse → Re: ATT UVerse Question

Does the type of wiring coax or cat5 make a difference in pic quality? I saw your post about the HD pic quality and that concerns me.

There are a few reasons I am thinking of switching. First, is i live in an apartment complex on the 2nd floor and currently my slimeline-5 dish is installed on the back of the building on the side of an overhang. Got that setup back in 2007. I've been with DTV since 1999. But the bigger the dishes get the more of a pain in the butt in terms of where I can have my dish installed. The install back in 2007 was a pain in the butt b/c my landlord only allows dishes in the back of the building and the only place u can put it is on the side of the back overhang. I asked the installer just to put it on the roof where the overhang is but he refused b/c he claimed he thought where he drilled the dish into the roof wuld leak. So anyways long story short where i live is just a royal pain to have DTV. My dish isnt easy to access since it's 2 floors up on an overhang. The gate to the back alley of our apartment complex was sealed shut by my stupid landlord so now if DTV has to come out for service calls they have to go around the block and drive into the alleyway in the back of my building to get to my dish.

2nd reason is (and i might be wrong) but at first glance it looks like UVerse offers more HD channels than DTV. It's been almost a year i think since DTV added any HD channels that i actually watched and i'm getting sick and tired of waiting around for them to add some. It's always the same story with them. "next quarter, next quarter" and then it never happens.

Last, DTV recently updated software and put a new HDGUI on the receivers. Since then (december) my dvr's have been EXTREMELY slow and DTV just doesnt seem to be doing anything about it. All they can tell people is restart your receiver ....clear the RAM etc etc instead of putting out a fix for this. It's just all getting old. The promise of more HD channels never happens now this new stupid and slow software.

But after all that i said if you are saying the pic quality isnt nowhere as good Uverse compared to DTV i just might have to put up with the bad i have to deal with DTV b/c PQ is very important to me.

No, the type of wiring does not effect HD picture quality.

Yes, U-verse has more HD channels than DirecTV.

»www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/ ··· 14422029

One thing to remember is that with U-verse, you have a 30 day guarantee. You can have it installed and keep your DirecTV service. That will give you an opportunity to do your own comparison. At the end of 30 days, you can decide which service you want to keep. If you decide that U-verse is not for you, you can cancel all of your U-verse service and owe nothing.

Well, you will get many here including myself that will tell you their HDPQ is the worst or one the worst out there. Some here think it is better or ok. I am not trying to start a forum war here so I post from my experience(s) with providers. There are things U-Verse has that are good like alot of HD channels but it was it's limitations that swayed me away. For one, depending on what profile you could be put on (32/5= 4HD streams, 25/2= 3 HD streams) if you are a heavy recorder and watch at the same time U-Verse could be an issue because of it's limited amount of HD streams. The max is 4HD which includes the ones that are recording. Second, to provide the 3HD, 4HD profiles AT&T decided to compress their HD bitrate down to 5.7-6 Mbps which causes alot of pixelation during fast-moving shows plus what I noticed when I had it is the color was not as vibrant and very dull. I know that U-Verse DVR's come with 500GB HDD's now but that is sometimes no enough room for some people and you only can have 1 DVR. There are some here who figured out how to put a 1TB or 2TB drive in their DVR. With DTV you can have up to 6 DVR's or with their new HR34 you can record 5 HD at once. I have 2 HDDVR's each with 500GB and you can use external HDD's if you run out of space. I also have the new HDGUI and am not having the problems you are having. What receivers do you have? My 2 HDDVR's (HR22-100) and my 2 HD receivers (H24-700) actually have been working better since the upgrade. I would take dslfan's advice if you try it and see them side by side to compare. That is the best way to know. But to be honest IMO DirecTV HD looks alot better than U-Verse HD.

I think Nuckfuts and other people have made some good points. Trying it out for 30 days is definitely something that you can do with their 30 day guarantee.

Also, I am pretty picky about PQ for video. People are exactly right that the PQ isn't always great and can be pixelated. However, I have also noticed that it varies a lot depending on the channel and also the show on a channel. I have seen that ESPN video quality is actually pretty good and most of the time I don't see any pixelation.

But then other times it is a different story. So really the best way to find out is to try it out yourself and see what you think. Also I changed to the newer VIP2250 DVR recently and surprisingly I noticed better picture quality with this DVR. I know that this new DVR has better CPU.

Hope that info helps