ATT U-Verse vs Comcast

You will most likely get a better deal though uverse. That being said from all I have seen and heard, comcast has better HD quality, uverse better SD. Internet speedwise I would give the edge to comcast. However depending on what you use the Internet for mostly, this may or may not be noticeable. If it were me I would go with the best HD picture quality unless finances were an issue and the deal from uverse was too good to pass up. I'm sure others can give you more detail but this was just the very basics.

All about apples and oranges. Keep in mind, that U-verse is limited to distance. If you are close enough to the V-Rad, you can get 24/3. If you are far, or have to use Bonded Pair, or in that rare case that they can wire Fiber to the Home, you would get 18meg download.

Depending on what you are using Comcast for, and the package they are selling you for $50 a month, compare to the other. As for HD, if you watch a lot of sports, especially on CBS, you will notice a lot of artifacts, same with shows that do confetti drops. I see regularly about 5.6 meg bitrates with most hd channels, with SD channels, I am seeing around 2 meg bitrates. The tool that I am using to see the bitrate info is available at http://www.uverserealtime.com. It runs in the background on my computer, so I am able to see stats from the RG anytime.

The choice is yours, you just have to decide.

Majority of those negative reviews are coming out for a lot of companies as people paid to bash the competition. Otherwise, those like I that have had U-verse for 12 months or more have had stable connections, no problems, and got what we expected for our money. As I have mentioned before, I expected after seeing the info for 12 months before U-verse came live in our neighborhood, that there was going to be problems with certain programs like Sports, and those shows with confetti drops.

I am 1900 feet from the V-rad, and get the 1/4 profile. That means that we can watch or record 4 hd programs, but in turn can watch just as many SD, which for us is 3 streams, since that is as many sets that we have. Space wise on the DVR, I have 7% used on the DVR, which is HD programs, that leaves me still with about 102 hours of hd recording time. We do not keep anything on the DVR for that long, so it usually gets deleted within a month or so.

The audio drop off has been an on going discussion regarding surround sound on U-Verse. Supposedly they are working on it. I do not hear it, due to I do not watch tv through a avrs.

Around here, $150 will get you a solid triple play deal from Comcast. Can't imagine why you'd pay that much to them and still keep DSL.

I had comcast, the internet always would stop working and need to reset it. I switched to WOW, the HD picture quality is the same if not better, although the internet feels a tad slower.

It is a hit or miss with people on the surround sound bug. Some people see it, some don't. I would not let it stop you from trying the service for 30 days.

Bud B

I can tell you from experience that Uverse drops audio on some stations. This past weekend I installed my brand new spanking Pioneer VSX-1121k with Polk's Blackstone TL350's along with my recycled Klipsch Sub 10. BD awesome . Uverse = .

I like Att up to the point of getting my new HTS set up. Now I'm at a crossroads. I have had great customer service when dealing with Att but now I may have no choice but to get Comcast because I don't think Att can do anything to fix the problem of audio drops out. I will give them a call and see what they say but from all things I have been reading I have my doubts.

Pauly Walnutts

I am considering switching to U-Verse. I currently have Cox and I live in the Cleveland, Ohio area and U-Verse has just become available in my area. AT&T is having one heck of a promotional incentive to new subscribers. I am going to get $450 back in prepaid Visa cards for signing up with U-Verse! Overall I am not saving any money compared to Cox but with U-Verse I will be getting a better DVR and they also have about 20 more HD channels that I get with Cox. Unfortunately I will only be getting 18Mbps with ATT which is quite a bit slower than the 25Mbps/3Mbps I get with Cox. Anyone out here have any recommendations for me? I have been with Cox for a long time but getting $450 for switching is so tempting, especially with this awful economy. How does the HD quality compare between Cox and ATT? I am guessing there won't be any difference, well at least ATT won't be any worse than Cox. Am I right?

I just switched from Charter, our local cable company (similar to Comcast but inferior) to U-Verse.

The DVR box and and regular boxes are far superior, as is recording 4 shows at once, but it has its limitations. In our location, we can only record/watch 2 HD streams at a time, in addition to 2 SD channels. So if your household has many HD TVs, or you watch a lot of TV, it can sometimes be frustrating, once the 4 TV streams are occupied, 2 HD and 2 SD, you can't watch any additional TV. The screen will simply ask if you want to interrupt a TV or watch recorded TV. That's not all bad, unless you have a young child that doesn't understand and just clicks until the TV works. My sister has interrupted my HD recordings a few times so she can watch her Spongebob and such, just clicking until her TV worked, killing my recording.

The TV service in my area has been spotty. ATT offered a few households in my neighborhood the option to sign up with U-Verse. They gave us the lecture on the U-Verse quality, explaining that we are only a couple hundred feet too far from the central hub, so we're limited to 2 HD and 2 SD, if we were closer, we would get 4 HD streams. Since we're that distance, they ran two lines to our house instead of one claiming it would give us the extra bandwidth, but I think that was a load of BS. In the amount of time I've typed this post, I lost connection for about 5 seconds twice. I can rewind and watch what was broadcasted while the screen was blank, so I have no idea why it says "TV connection lost" when it was able to cache that content in the DVR. It could be a faulty box.

I'm hoping ATT will do the necessary infrastructure improvements to do 4 HD streams to our house, when they do, I will be a very happy camper. The rest of the service is great.

HD quality is pretty good, nothing like DirecTV though, not even close IMO. There's noticeable compression on some channels, especially ABC, NBC, CBS, and Fox, the most popular channels for most people. Thankfully, I rarely watch those channels. NGC-HD, Discovery HD, History HD, and their affiliates look fantastic in comparison. Far less noticeable compression, and look almost on par with DirecTV. Comedy Central HD is also disappointing, looking pretty terrible IMO for HD. I don't know how much of that is the source material, or how much is ATT's fault. The channels I watch most, the Discovery networks, look great, so it works for me.

Hope that helps a bit. Definitely ask U-Verse how many HD streams you will get. Some areas only get 1, and I've heard that some get 4. Depending on how many HDTVs are in your house, that could be a deal breaker.

U verse is the biggest piece of crap there is. I fell for the hype and lucky for me they have a 30 day trial period, 3 days into it, I cancelled and went back to cable. The audio dropped constantly, re-compressed signal caused the worst black ghosting and bits that made it seem like an atari game at times. I've seriously seen PPV events illegally streamed with better picture quality then some of the football games I had to endure with U verse. Also you can't watch HD on more then 2 tv's simultaneously, something they don't mention in all of the glossy ads, it's only until after they install it that the tech drops the bomb on you.

When I cancelled they sent a tech to my house unannounced and he offered to tweak my system to see if the PQ improved. He messed with the settings on my tv and turned the contrast down to zero in order to make the ghosting less obvious, it's a total joke. I hate my local cable company, but I came running back into their arms after that horrible experience. I'm considering direct tv since I've heard they offer the best PQ, still debating it though since I hate signing contracts.

Whatever you do, stay away from U verse. Don't believe me, google U verse and picture quality to read the endless complaints. If constant commercials and solicitations brainwashed you like they did me, just remember you have 30 days to change your mind.

Here's a modem that you may want to check out... Motorola SBG6580. It's basically a wireless gateway, router, and modem all in 1 device. It's decently priced for what it does. Now if TWC would just allow me to get it I'd be happy...

U-verse definitely is having their growing pains. On the bright side, every time I call tech support, they offer to be out within 2 hours if needed, and every time they've done a good job.

They rewired our main lines into out house, and re-wired the lines underneath our house to help us out. Immediately, the audio drops were nearly eliminated, the HD didn't macro pixelate any more, and the internet became more reliable.

In my experience, U-verse has been about on par with our old cable company for TV service, better for internet, and the customer service has been far and above better.

With Charter, the techs would diagnose, and the supervisors never cleared them to repair the faulty lines, even though we agreed to pay to have it done. U-verse volunteered to do it for free. That alone justifies our switch.

I've had U-verse for about a year now and coming from Comcast I can say that customer service from U-verse is far and away better than that from Comcast. I haven't had any audio dropouts. Their HD video quality is ok but not as good as Comcast, much less Direct tv. The image on the uverse system brakes up with fast movement, Image containing flash or strove lights deteriorates very quickly.

U-verse DVRs are much better than Comcast which are usually old and clunky, or new and full of bugs, lately changing TV channels with ATT receivers have become a little slow though, when it was very quick before.

One big plus of the U-verse system is that now all receivers are basically DVRs, and you can pause, rewind, and fast forward live tv and record from any room. Anybody can quickly get used to that feature which is offered at no extra charge, especially in my case where 6 displays are in play, 6 dvrs would be cost prohibited for me and I assume many people.

The internet has been pretty good so far and I have no complaints about it.

I would love to go back to Direct TV which I had some years ago for its picture quality, but I live in Florida and we have many thunder storms during the rainy season and I hate loosing the picture every afternoon in the summer time. If Direct Tv didn't have this shortcoming I would be their customer forever.

OK...of course I came to AVS to do my homework and now am thinking did I just buy a bunch of marketing hype, or flat out get lied to by AT&T?

Went in this morning to buy a new cell phone at the AT&T office. I already have land line and the DSL 6MB internet connection with them. They asked me about my TV provider of course. I have Charter who is getting me for $150 a month for the 3 HD & 1 digital only receivers and all the programming. Except every couple years I do the "grovelling" and get it down to like $135 for one year. Like currently.

I explained every which way I could think of that HD quality is my most number one, not to be taken a chance on lesser quality provider, priority....end of story. Due to having a really high end projection setup at 8.5' wide in dedicated media room. When good clean signals from whichever channel are sent to Charter, what they send to me can be nothing short of spectacular. Am totally happy with the PQ aspect. Other issues and high cost aside. I honestly feel I get top quality if they get it from their satellites. Of course with that size and a very bright image, all the artifacts and crap on bad signals are visible too.

Both the one seemingly knowledgeable customer service guy, who has good 50" LED LCD set and used to have Direct TV (he said that was rated highest outside of now U-Verse with the fiber optic delivery) and his manager who was also helping me.....swore up and down that now U-verse is the best there is HD quality wise. "J.D. Powers agrees" and all that stuff if they are to be believed. I grilled them no less than 30 minutes about it.

For $30 less per month and also upgrading my internet speed from 6 to 12mbs. Is it possible in some areas they are "that" good image quality wise? Anyone around the Burbank / Glendale area have U-verse HD and love it? I scheduled an install for a week from now, but from what I'm reading maybe I will just have them only do my detached media room first and check it out critically during the 30 day period they said I had to change my mind. Before I actually cancel Charter and also have them do the whole house with the other drop line or whatever feeds these signals.

Thoughts on the pure, best picture quality of fiber optic U-Verse and their mpeg-4 scheme vs. whatever the best of Direct TV or Dish or Charter or TW or Comcast can do with whatever compression they use....would be much appreciated. We never will have more that 2 HD channels on at the same time.

Thanks much

Ron

not to offend anyone, but price talk with these companies isn't real helpful because they play so many games with price depending on how long you have been a customer, usually longer equals worse prices (which is asinine but that's beside the point)

anyways. does anyone know of a good side by side feature comparison? I know Comcast has the ESPN app for your mobile device and that Comcast will let you take your DVR contents offline with you on your ipad but I'm not 100% sure what the full list is.

At the end of the day, price is going to drive the discussion for me and based on how stupidly their pricing structure is set up I will likely bounce back and forth between u-verse and comcast in perpetuity. idiots.

I have had Dish, cable, and Now I have UVERSE and it is the best service I have ever had. Not once in the 5 years I have had it has it ever went down. I run all my TVS and win 2008 server and a NAS server on it and its great.

The one thing I have found with comcast in some states they do not offer a outside static IP with there residential service and force the resident to pay for business class service.

U-Verse is an extremely bad service. It's picture quality is horrendous, and it was designed as a crippled system from the get-go in order to stuff as much on a copper wire as possible, with little room to expand. Look at deals on Comcast to bundle internet and TV, as DSL is horribly slow. Comcast's internet is usually pretty good, and the Blast! tier, depending on the area is 25/4 or 50/10. What I want to know is what the heck do you have on your Comcast service? My bill, after my promo ends, will be in the $150 range, and that's for TV AND internet, with the upgraded TV package plus HBO.