206013671
09-29-2008, 04:55 PM
Hi all... I live in Sherman Oaks, CA and recently moved into a new apartment. This is a review based upon the ordering, installation and first two weeks of service experience. Sorry it's long, but I thought I should be thorough for those of you seeking information.
Background:
I have been a DirecTV customer for several years, but last year moved to a building that only offered DirecTV in SD. I tried to get a DirecTV dish installed in my apartment's balcony, but a building was blocking access to the HD satellite. I decided to try Dish network and there was a narrow enough opening to their satellites that allowed me to have HD, so I went with them.
In mid-September of this year, I moved to a new apartment building. This new building offered DirecTV HD, Dish HD and Time Warner cable with HD. My original plan was to keep my Dish service with the single DVR for two-rooms. But after calling to have my home phone and DSL service transferred, I was intrigued by the idea of this “new” service called U-Verse. I did some research and determined that even though there were many posts on this board and others calling the quality OK or less than Dish, I’d give it a try and keep my Dish at the same time. I thought I’d make an evaluation a month in.
Ordering:
I called AT&T back after doing my research and placed an order for U-Verse. The AT&T rep was phenomenal. I ordered the U-400 package with the Pro internet service (3.0 Up, 1.0 Down). The rep was great to talk with, very nice and she took care of everything as promised. It was about 4 weeks in advance so she couldn’t schedule for the day and time I wanted, but promised to follow-up and call me back.
Sure enough, she called me back a few days later to let me know I was scheduled for installation the date and time I wanted. Yada, yada, yada… a few weeks go by and I get the phone call from AT&T confirming my scheduled installation for the right time of day, and the right day of the week, but one week I advance than I wanted. So I called the rep back up (same rep… she gave me her number and extension) and left her a voicemail. She called back the next day apologizing that the person booking things put it down wrong and it was corrected. All was good.
The day before the actual order was to be installed, I called to confirm and all was good. I was scheduled between 8am – 10am for a Friday morning.
Installation:
That Friday morning I arranged to work from home so I could be there as the guy did the installation. He called about 9am checking as to whether I would be home and asking if it was OK for him to come over. Yes, c’mon over. He showed up about 20 minutes later. We did our introductions and showed him what I wanted. I asked him if this was the 4-6 hour installation that AT&T warned it may be, and that many of you on this board and others had warned it could be. He said nope, that this building is so new and the wiring is so good that it would be more of a plug-n-play installation than anything else.
He started the installation by doing some tests on the wiring to ensure things were configured properly. He indicated I was 1,423 feet from the box down the street – which he indicated was nearly as good as sitting on top of the box. He said the signal was incredibly strong and there were several other customers in the building as well, so he knew this would be easy. He asked if I was getting a phone installed too. No, I said… since I wasn’t getting DSL, no need for a phone (I live and die by my iPhone, and my apartment has a strong 3G signal).
He made one cross-connect from the living room to feed the data jack in the bedroom, hooked everything up and did some tests. Perfect on the first try. He explained how the equipment worked and away he went. Total time for everything was a little over an hour.
Experience:
I’ve been fairly impressed by the reliability and quality of the product. There are only two issues I have at this point: one with the remote control (and it’s fairly-well documented as a software issue with the Motorola boxes) and one issue with the close-up quality of High Def. I’m not sure how to explain it beyond there’s a digital bursting of some sort that is noticeable if you’re up close to my plasma TV. I think it’s just the nature of the packets being reassembled and displayed by the Motorola Receiver/DVR. If you step back to 10 feet or so, where the sofa is, you really can’t tell there’s a difference in quality from what I had with Dish. (Yes, I’m sure some of you will nitpick and say I’m wrong… I can see the difference a touch, but it’s immaterial IMHO).
I personally think the Remote Control problem is bigger. It’s just a slow response – sometimes no response – from the remote to the Motorola Receiver/DVR
The Motorola Receiver/DVR hasn’t failed, though I don’t like the DVR as much as I did the Dish DVR. And I too had problems with the HDMI cable, which was running from the Motorola Receiver/DVR to my Denon Audio/Video receiver before being output to the TV. I’ve just gone with component cables and I don’t see the difference (again… I know I’m wrong, but it’s not material… it’s more of a hassle with just having more cables to maintain).
I haven’t had the need to call for service or anything yet. All has been good. And I do have the total home DVR service and it works great. No issues.
Bitrate has been good too. I forget the actual number, since I’m at work typing this up, but it’s in the 25 or 26 Mbps range. Each HD stream is about 7Mbps or so.
Comparing to Dish… my satellite setup didn’t allow me to get some channels consistently (the building seemed to interfere quite a bit, or cloud cover caused some inconsistency… yes, there are periodic clouds in SoCal), so I’m quite happy with the quality of the HD and SD. I get more local channels in HD on U-Verse than I did with HD (I get Channels 2, 4, 5, 7, 9, 11, 13 and 24 in HD now, versus just 2, 4, 7 and 11 on Dish). I lose a few HD channels from Dish, but it’s only a matter of time before I get those back, and I didn’t watch many of those anyway.
No complaints from me, and I’m quite picky. I hope this is helpful to some of you considering U-Verse!
Background:
I have been a DirecTV customer for several years, but last year moved to a building that only offered DirecTV in SD. I tried to get a DirecTV dish installed in my apartment's balcony, but a building was blocking access to the HD satellite. I decided to try Dish network and there was a narrow enough opening to their satellites that allowed me to have HD, so I went with them.
In mid-September of this year, I moved to a new apartment building. This new building offered DirecTV HD, Dish HD and Time Warner cable with HD. My original plan was to keep my Dish service with the single DVR for two-rooms. But after calling to have my home phone and DSL service transferred, I was intrigued by the idea of this “new” service called U-Verse. I did some research and determined that even though there were many posts on this board and others calling the quality OK or less than Dish, I’d give it a try and keep my Dish at the same time. I thought I’d make an evaluation a month in.
Ordering:
I called AT&T back after doing my research and placed an order for U-Verse. The AT&T rep was phenomenal. I ordered the U-400 package with the Pro internet service (3.0 Up, 1.0 Down). The rep was great to talk with, very nice and she took care of everything as promised. It was about 4 weeks in advance so she couldn’t schedule for the day and time I wanted, but promised to follow-up and call me back.
Sure enough, she called me back a few days later to let me know I was scheduled for installation the date and time I wanted. Yada, yada, yada… a few weeks go by and I get the phone call from AT&T confirming my scheduled installation for the right time of day, and the right day of the week, but one week I advance than I wanted. So I called the rep back up (same rep… she gave me her number and extension) and left her a voicemail. She called back the next day apologizing that the person booking things put it down wrong and it was corrected. All was good.
The day before the actual order was to be installed, I called to confirm and all was good. I was scheduled between 8am – 10am for a Friday morning.
Installation:
That Friday morning I arranged to work from home so I could be there as the guy did the installation. He called about 9am checking as to whether I would be home and asking if it was OK for him to come over. Yes, c’mon over. He showed up about 20 minutes later. We did our introductions and showed him what I wanted. I asked him if this was the 4-6 hour installation that AT&T warned it may be, and that many of you on this board and others had warned it could be. He said nope, that this building is so new and the wiring is so good that it would be more of a plug-n-play installation than anything else.
He started the installation by doing some tests on the wiring to ensure things were configured properly. He indicated I was 1,423 feet from the box down the street – which he indicated was nearly as good as sitting on top of the box. He said the signal was incredibly strong and there were several other customers in the building as well, so he knew this would be easy. He asked if I was getting a phone installed too. No, I said… since I wasn’t getting DSL, no need for a phone (I live and die by my iPhone, and my apartment has a strong 3G signal).
He made one cross-connect from the living room to feed the data jack in the bedroom, hooked everything up and did some tests. Perfect on the first try. He explained how the equipment worked and away he went. Total time for everything was a little over an hour.
Experience:
I’ve been fairly impressed by the reliability and quality of the product. There are only two issues I have at this point: one with the remote control (and it’s fairly-well documented as a software issue with the Motorola boxes) and one issue with the close-up quality of High Def. I’m not sure how to explain it beyond there’s a digital bursting of some sort that is noticeable if you’re up close to my plasma TV. I think it’s just the nature of the packets being reassembled and displayed by the Motorola Receiver/DVR. If you step back to 10 feet or so, where the sofa is, you really can’t tell there’s a difference in quality from what I had with Dish. (Yes, I’m sure some of you will nitpick and say I’m wrong… I can see the difference a touch, but it’s immaterial IMHO).
I personally think the Remote Control problem is bigger. It’s just a slow response – sometimes no response – from the remote to the Motorola Receiver/DVR
The Motorola Receiver/DVR hasn’t failed, though I don’t like the DVR as much as I did the Dish DVR. And I too had problems with the HDMI cable, which was running from the Motorola Receiver/DVR to my Denon Audio/Video receiver before being output to the TV. I’ve just gone with component cables and I don’t see the difference (again… I know I’m wrong, but it’s not material… it’s more of a hassle with just having more cables to maintain).
I haven’t had the need to call for service or anything yet. All has been good. And I do have the total home DVR service and it works great. No issues.
Bitrate has been good too. I forget the actual number, since I’m at work typing this up, but it’s in the 25 or 26 Mbps range. Each HD stream is about 7Mbps or so.
Comparing to Dish… my satellite setup didn’t allow me to get some channels consistently (the building seemed to interfere quite a bit, or cloud cover caused some inconsistency… yes, there are periodic clouds in SoCal), so I’m quite happy with the quality of the HD and SD. I get more local channels in HD on U-Verse than I did with HD (I get Channels 2, 4, 5, 7, 9, 11, 13 and 24 in HD now, versus just 2, 4, 7 and 11 on Dish). I lose a few HD channels from Dish, but it’s only a matter of time before I get those back, and I didn’t watch many of those anyway.
No complaints from me, and I’m quite picky. I hope this is helpful to some of you considering U-Verse!