AT&T Adding 'Premium' U-Verse HD Tier

I'm glad I have free HD with cox

...free with horribly crappy Passport box rental.

your right about that

You mean "free", as in "already included in the price I pay".

Only people pulling in OTA networks have free HD.

And, I suppose, anyone who pirates satellite, if that's even possible any more

you DON'T have "free hd" with cox. the hd fee is simply stuffed into the box rental.

why do they claim its free

Because it makes for a good marketing scam. Unless it's clear QAM you have to rent their equipment (either HD box or cablecard).

Verizon did the same thing with their Extreme HD package. Now if I want those extra channels, I have to fork over an additional $10 on top of the $20 I pay for my HD box. Owning my own box sounds better with each passing day.

If I make ANY changes to my account, I have to pay extra money to get some of the channels I already have.

U-Verse HD lineup sorted by channel

IIRC, those channels were if x package as ordered and if HD service was active, then it would let you have that channel. For instance, if you subscribed to HBO and HD, you would automatically get HBO HD. If you just subscribed to HD, you wouldn't get it. I forget if this was also true, but I would think if you just subscribed to HBO you wouldn't get HBO HD without the HD package.

I'm glad that I have OTA HD.

I do too. But OTA HD channels number about 6 in my area. Cable, U-Verse, Fios offer anywhere from low 30s upward of 100 channels.

I've got all the locals on HD OTA (~a dozen), and about 42 OTA total. I'll have a bunch more in February

how the heck do you get OTA in Valencia? unless you have a 100ft tower in your backyard?

Uverse? What's that?
/sarcasm

Sound like the direct tv hd extra pack

That has
Universal HD
MGM HD
HDNet Movies
Smithsonian Channel HD
Palladia

In it.

They are HD only channels.

HD NET and HD Theater are in basic HD.

With ATT teaming up with direct tv next year that may trun out to be a better deal.

They Have BIG TEN + all alts in HD.

CSN Chicago HD and CSN Chicago + HD.

I can smell a Merger in not distance future between them..AT&T and DirecTV
which is good for the Customers..

I hope not. AT&T is evil, DirecTV not so much.

It should be free and all channels should be in HD by now. Only America drags it feet on getting new tech to people.

Hell in Europe there is a free satellite service with 130 channels available. »www.freesat.co.uk/

TV in UK isn't free per say, you have to pay to have a license for your TV.

Hey at least the B&W license is cheaper!

Surprised politicians didn't try that crap here at the same time as the DTV switch over.

Only 2 of those free channels are HD. I'd rather pay for 100 channels then have 2 free ones.

Hell, OTA people in America get more free HD.

Yeah but in the UK they pay a viewers tax of like 100 pounds per year per set so its technically not free.

I understand that competitive pressure is driving AT&T add more HD channels. That's a good thing. I understand those channels cost money, so it makes sense that AT&T would break some of them off into a new optional tier rather than raise everyone's rates.

Universal HD must be a relatively expensive channel. Time Warner (the home of "Free HD") also has Universal on a small, special HD tier and charges extra for it. If you are to go on rumors, U-verse appears to be planning to add a lot of channels soon, so perhaps we're giving up Universal but getting many more in return.

The problem with all of this is that AT&T's reps seem completely clueless when you call them about it. If you're going to go through all the effort to send out a mass mailing, inform customer service! And update the website. There is nothing about it on the uconnect site that the card directs you to.

Yeah, I like this better than raising everyone elses rate.

Okay.. anyone care to give Comcast credit yet? They seem to be the only company that does not believe that the HD they have is a premium above and beyond equipment rental.

Unless AT&T, Fios, TWC, or the birds are giving you "programming" that is different than what you already have, then any amount of money above the equipment rental is a cash grab in order to pay for the ability to have a service in which they use to compete for your business..

I have NO problem paying a small fee to rent equipment that I'd otherwise have to purchase. However, I am do not think it's right to make you 1) pay for the service such as Bravo, or Discovery, and then 2) pay for it to be clearer.

The way things keep going, AT&T, FiOS, DirecTV, et all, are clearly and quickly becoming no better than Comcast/cable TV in general on rate increases; they're just doing it in their own way.

I haven't checked in about a year and I know in some markets it is true, but I don't believe that is necessarily true for all Comcast markets, is it?

Towards the article in general, I can understand back in 2000 paying Comcast an additional fee for HD when it was new and exciting. Now, almost in 2009, I cannot understand anybody paying an additional fee just to have access to a HD or digital signal.

For the subscriptions channels (ala HBO) you can vote with your own dollars whether it is worth it to you, for the channels that are primarily funded by ad dollars such as Bravo or TNT - if I were an advertiser, I would pull most of my ads from the networks that require or allow an additional fee to be imposed just to see my ads more clearly.

More markets than none - and they are rare that do charge an HD tier fee - don't charge for the HD tiers.. they simply rent the box and you get the channels in the lowest digital tier. Premiums come with the premiums you purchase. I know that many TWC systems even charge to have HBO HD along with HBO subscriptions.. so..

I'll give 'em credit--and I haven't exactly been running to their defense in the past. The biggest reason I didn't abandon Comcast and switch to WOW when I moved into a dual-franchise area recently was because WOW has fewer HD channels at a higher price.

(The other big reason was because I had no interest in going through another TiVo S3 CableCARD fiasco. I had a friend who was once a WOW customer, tried to get a CableCARD for his TV and was told by the installer that they "just don't work." It took four truck rolls for Comcast to get mine working, but at least they kept at it rather than just shrugging their shoulders and handing me a Motorola DVR.)

I'll be honest, I'm not sure how people would believe that Comcast is such a value. For starters they do charge for HD - at least in my area (and the price that you pay depends on which tier you sign up for).

To compare apples to apples, here's how the price would break down, if I were paying ala carte, between FiOS and Comcast in this area (we can get into bundling, and there's no doubt that savings could be had, but I just wanted to give a comparison point). I'll assume that I want no additional packages (although Verizon now includes all their sports channels in their HD package, so to make it fair, I'll include Comcast's sports pack in the mix), and assuming I want one DVR. Here's how it shakes out:

Comcast:
Digital Preferred programming tier - $70.65
DVR - $13.95
Sports Pack - $5.00
HD Service for this tier - $6.50

Total = $96.10/month

Verizon:
Extreme HD programming package - $57
HD DVR - $16

Total = $73/month

anyone still want to argue that comcast doesn't charge for HD? Granted, all these companies have different pricing schemes. The one that works best for someone depends on what they're looking for. I'm not arguing that. I'm simply pointing out that you DO pay for the service, one way or another.

Edit - I know this is a U-Verse thread, but I'm using FiOS for two reasons: 1) U-Verse isn't available around here; 2) FiOS is, and that's the service that I use.

Yeah, instead of raising fees for HD which only certain percentage have, they just raise the box fee for everyone. Comcast gains more income with their route....Tisk tisk.

Comcast already owns the cable box and bought them a long time ago. They're just raping as much money from the consumers as possible.

Comcast had the highest rates of any cable company we've had. They didn't charge a specific HD fee but they sure made up for it in other ways. So, I can't in good conscience give Comcast an atta-boy for being a value leader. To me, it seems fair to charge people that are interested in higher quality service to pay a bit more for it. Not terribly different from paying $10 more for faster internet. Makes a better value for people who don't need the high end.

I can't complain about U-Verse's base HD fee too much because I didn't have to buy the equipment, nor am I paying for a box rental, nor a DVR fee, and just $5/month to get HD programming and access to my HD DVR in my bedroom (2nd HDTV).

It sucks that Universal HD is going away, but it could be a lot worse. TWC wanted extra for just HDNet, HDNet Movies, Mojo and Universal. Maybe the problem isn't AT&T, but the networks charging too much for access. At least this way we can choose whether or not it's worth it.

-- Rob

U-verse needs RSN's in HD.

ATT will start offing direct tv deals next year as well and in chicago the lack of CSN HD and CSN + HD is a big trun off for U-verse.

I got free hdtv for a year when i signed up for uverse. i am going to drop it when they start charging me as the quality is not that much better. They are going to be craming more channels in compressing them even more? Yeah that the time i say goodbye to the pixelated junk.

i would pay for it if i was able to watch multiple hd streams on uverse. 1 hd stream @ a time? hahah u gotta be kidding me!

... and they are already jacking up the prices.

HD is designed to be a replacement for SD programming. It should not cost any extra. SD will go away to be replaced by HD content, that doesn't mean we all should pay 3, 4, times as much for the same content.

Unfortunately, that's what's looks like will happen (as was predicted.)

Do you guys find that HD is really all what its been hyped up to be? To me, its ok but not that great. Then, I dont watch a whole lot of TV either. Overall in my view its marginal.

Depends what you watch. I occasionally house-sit at my bro's place across town and he has a 55" Sony DLP thru Charter Cable, and watching DiscoveryHD is AWESOME. I've noticed that ESPN-HD is great as well. The networks IMHO HD offerings aren't as good-guesstimating saving bandwidth on their side. CBS/ABC/NBC not as good as ESPN/TBS for sporting events in HD.
But HD vs analog-Vtr, you're missing something big, man.Marginal it isn't-HD(with the right HDTV set) IS DA Bomb!

There are more channels

Last night I found at least 34 new channels in my HD lineup with a message saying:

Service is currently not available in your area.

Coming Soon...

Based in Chicago - many of the channels include Speed HD, Fox, Fox News, TWC, plus more HBO, Showtime, Encore, Cinemax, etc

For whatever price, just to have Speed and Comcast Sports Net in the lineup is well worth the price...the new whole house DRV thing is pretty suite and they have been making changes to the user interface. Having switched from Comcast as soon as AT&T was available I would never go back and tell everyone I know how great of a deal AT&T is...even if I had to pay what I paid for Comcast previously.

Here's the full story

»www.att.com/gen/press-ro ··· id=26238