It took a few tries to get the phone service switched over but that was a strange situation.
The service itself is great. We use the DVR regularly, and we can watch the DVR from any TV in the house.
DSL is fast and speed is as advertised.
If you have a home alarm system make sure they are compatible with U-Verse.
The HD channels are great, and you can select programs to record via a web interface.
We had DirecTV before and like this a lot better.
Check this out..
Home audio & video: AT&T’s U-verse HDTV & Interenet Service -User experience?
http://forums.cnet.com/5208-7596_102-0.html?forumID=60&threadID=247130&messageID=2486001
U-Verse comes in over copper, no need to rewire.
The residential gateway handles all IP - TV, DSL, VOIP. It's also your wireless hub.
Mrs. Sooner noticed that the TV wouldn't come back on after she'd turned it off.
The tech said "Oh yeah, that's just a problem with the HDMI interface that we don't have all the bugs worked out with yet. You'll need to disconnect it and just use the regular cables."
That was the wrong thing for him to say. We use the cable service now and have no complaints - once the install was scheduled and finished, that is.
AT&T lost money that day.
Had the service for six months. Great, no problems to this point. After IKE the service was back up before power was restored. Internet is very stable. Would not go back to other service at this point.
From the link below.
http://forums.cnet.com/5208-7596_102-0.html?forumID=60&threadID=247130&messageID=2486001
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U-Verse = REVERSE. Not ready for primetime.
by rmclean949 - 12/8/08 3:10 PM In reply to: AT&T’s U-verse HDTV & Interenet Service -User experience? by Prandy
I want to tell you how grossly disappointed I am in the Uverse offering.
First you need to know that I am Senior IT professional and have been in the industry for 18 years.
I have been dealing with networks before the IP protocol even existed. I was very excited to try the new U-verse product being in the advanced technology field supporting IP telephony and very large data centers for Fortune 500 companies.
I was very excited to find out that I had 78 Mbs of bandwidth available to my residence from the local SONET MUX. If you don’t know what this means then you should forward it to a supervisor who probably will.
I am very unhappy with the following issues that I’m having with the U-verse product:
1- Every 19 seconds I have an audio clip is very reproducible
2- I consistently have issues with the scheduling software not recording a scheduled program. This is not because of a conflict either I’m very aware of the conflicts and how to resolve them.
3- The fact that I cannot watch more than two HD channels in my entire residence is not acceptable. I understand that not all you U-verse clients will have the available bandwidth to their residence that I do but that should not limit my viewing ability.
4- The channel lineup and guide is TERRIBLE and has no rhyme or reason as to how it is laid out. There is no “category” search which is available on all other “modern” (and I use the term loosely) video delivery services such as cable and/or DirecTV.
5- The limitations imposed by a single “whole house” DVR is ridiculous when you have a paying customer who is willing to pay for an additional DVR but your corporate policy does not allow one home to have to DVR’s.
6- Your development team using the Windows CE as a platform for an enormous initiative for your organization? Who made that decision??
****Not being able to pause TV on a “non-whole home DVR” is a HUGE omission in your marketing material.
****Not being able to schedule a recording from anywhere other than the “whole home DVR”is another HUGE omission in your marketing material.
I have a Gigabit Ethernet network in my home. You could not have a better candidate for this product and I am very dissatisfied and look forward to hearing from you. I can provide valuable feedback to your organization from an end-user perspective that will help you gain market share.
I look forward to a response from a manager at some level you can give me some type of a warm and fuzzy and not just lip service like your customer service people on the phone. I know a lot of companies like yours are monitoring blogs.... personally I do not like blogging but if that’s what it takes to get some answers I guess I will be blogging away!
Sincerely,
Robert
AT&T RESPONSE - NONE. NADA. The TDM dinosaur can’t get out of it’s own way trying to deploy packet based tecnology. The product manager/marketing team should be fired!
If you can get DSL, I recommend Netflix. $10/month or so, free downloadable movies and 1 movie at a time via the mail.
What to do??
Who can provide all these telecom services: Security Connection, Cellular 5 phones, TV Cable, Computer Line and Land Line.. ???
TV: image quality is utter trash. The worst “HD” picture you’ll see. Comcast, Dish, DirecTV, etc all look better.
Phone: good voice quality. Phone number availability is linked to the uptime of your U-Verse DSL box and power supply, however. If your power goes out, AT&T will give you a battery backup that will kick in, but once that battery is depleted, your phone won’t work.
Internet: not the fastest, but pretty decent speeds for the price. Comcast and especially Verizon are faster, though with Verizon FiOS you’ll wind up paying for that speed.
Customer support: I’ve never had a problem with them over the last 10+ years, though that was back when they were Bellsouth.
We got U-verse about 3 years ago. We started with TV, internet, and phone (Mrs. RWA wanted phone). We had a major outage on the average every 4 months or so. We were the only house affected.
I went through the excruciating service people on the phone every time. They all sound like they come from some other planet. I could give you a long dissertation on that but not now.
After farting around for a half-hour or more of unplugging, plugging, rebooting, moving router, etc. they always told me, “We need to send a tech out. We got appointments five days from today.”
(At this point we dropped the phone since it went out when the internet did. We also dropped the TV since we didn’t really have the time to sit and watch.)
Each tech came and scratched his head each time, called the mothership, ran tests and eventually told me one of the wire pairs was bad and he was going to use another.
Another time we had an outage the guy replaced a plug. Another time they said they switched the wire pair again. Nobody ever thought to find out why the wire pair was bad. Seems like a logical thing to do.
Finally, after over a year, a tech tested the wire and said there was a problem, just as everyone else said. This guy actually LOOKED at the wire from the interface device all the way to the router. The first guy had run about 100 feet of cable on the outside of the house. The new tech found a staple through it. One wire appeared to have been almost totally severed and eventually broke. The insulation was compromised on all but one wire in the cable. Water was getting in and causing big problems.
He ripped out the long wire, installed a short one, and put the router in a better location.
Bingo! Good service since then for about a year.
I hate the AT&T company. Until recently, they had THE worst online bill paying system in the developed world. We have uverse internet, a land line, and DSL that we provide for our daughter at another house. It took forever to get these three bills paid. I explained the problem to them about three different times in increasingly sarcastic emails to them. Finally, one day, they actually made improvements! It’s still a bit strange, but it goes a lot faster. Instead of having one user name and one password for the whole company, I ended up with three different ones. At least it feels like you are talking to one company. Before if felt as if there was a separate company for each account.
Another thing I hate about them is that about once a week I get an offer in the mail to add services. The ones I dropped some time ago.
I dumped Time Warner and got uVerse a yr. or so ago. Like it.
We DVR almost everything we plan to watch so we can skip through the commercials.
Can record 2 HD +1 reg channel while watching another channel.
It goes out occasionally, had the DVR replaced once or twice. Not perfect but I like it better than the cable service we had.
I’ve had Uverse for about a year and a half.
The one problem I have is that the HD video quality isn’t as good as I would like. It’s a bit too heavily compressed, so you can see the compression artifacts. I’m a photographer and am very sensitive to video artifacts.
On the plus side, they have almost every channel you would want, and the prices are a bit lower than cable.
I have been very happy with the internet service. I pay for 12 mbps and get the speed I pay for. I subscribe to Netflix and MLB.TV and the picture quality is amazing.
The one real negative for some is that if you have conventional home phone service (I don’t), they must convert that to the Uverse IP phone to give you service.
Much better quality than Charter Cable, which I had before.