Originally Posted by
Farmer Kaine 
I'll just throw in my 2 cents.
I've been a Cox subscriber for 30 years. First at my parents house, then for the last 10 years at my own place. The service has always been outstanding, yet the pricing and channel availability has been high/low respectively.
I had Uverse installed last Friday, and after 2 days I re-ordered Cox.
Here's why things happened as they did:
I have 5 HDTVs in my house, all of which may be on at any given time. We also have 2 shows recording at once almost every night (cox limit). There have been several days that we would want to record a 3rd or 4th show, but it's impossible with Cox. Also, the pricing per month has gone from $105/mo 5 years ago to $258/mo for last months bill. We have 5 cable boxes... 2 standard digital and 3 whole home DVR. We also have HBO, "middle of the road" internet, and standard unlimited phone service. HD is free with Cox, and provides approximately 100-110 channels.
2 of my neighbors have satellite TV, and neither are happy with it. They have both tried Uverse (when it was released in the Cleveland area) and both switched back to satellite within a few months. I've seen and read a lot about Uverse, and have kept up with their line upgrades in my neighborhood, and stuff like that. I took the plunge 2 weeks ago and ordered Uverse online, had a rep call me and confirm everything and I was waiting impatiently for the install date (1/25). Between order and install, AT&T contacted me 5 times regarding "problems" with the order. Either incorrect readings off of their bonded pairs, or mis-scheduled install dates, or an incorrectly packaged system, etc. I had AT&T phone service up until 7 years ago, and it was a nightmare, with terrible (yet friendly) support. I started to get the same feeling again. Friday the 25th came, and the technician was very friendly, installed all 5 STB's, tested them al one at a time, showed me some of the basics with the system, and headed outside. He sat in his van for about 40 minutes, called me and said one of our wire pairs was not working. He called in a ticket for repair the next day. Saturday, the tech was on our street, fixed our pair, and verified it by checking some settings on our TV and in the router.
All is fine, right?
Well, Friday night, my kids were at my parents for the night, and Saturday night we had a mini-trip to a hotel for the night because it's fun for the kids sometimes. Now it's Sunday... The living room and bedroom TVs are on, both tuned to HD channels. My kids are going to bed. We go upstairs to get them situated. We go to my daughter's room first, browse the Guide, pick a show on of the HD Nick channels, say goodnight, and head to my son's room. There, we browse the guide, find a show, try to tune it, but low and behold... ALL HD SERVICES ARE IN USE, PRESS OK TO INTERRUPT ANOTHER TV. To this, we pressed OK. My daughter says "My TV just went off"... and the problems begin.
Literally 2 minutes later, a scheduled recording kicks in, plus I forgot to set one, so we don't even count that one. By the time we walked to my daughter's room, both the kids were off because of the scheduled recording.
So what are our options...? Both kids want to watch HD shows... and they should... since there's really no other purpose to have HD flat panels in their rooms. I want to record 2 HD shows, but only scheduled one...so that's okay. I want to watch another in the living room, while I finish eating a light meal, and my wife wants to watch something in bed, as she wakes up early for work.
Through some quick Googling, I find out that I have a 1SD/3HD profile set up. I called AT&T to find out what this means, and they said that AT&T limits all residences to 4 streams at once, and my profile is set to 1 SD and 3 HD channels. He said he could "upgrade" me to 0SD/4HD, so we could watch 1 additional HD channel, but that would effectively block all the other SD channels from streaming to my house. So that's ridiculous as well, since occasionally something is on one of the SD movie channels, but not the limited HD versions.
I asked the rep why they would sell me 5 STB's for my 5 HDTV's, but only allow 4 programs at once. I also asked what would happen if I had 4 kids, and we had 6-7 TVs, and we all want to watch something different. He tod me that they just assume people keep less than 4 on at once.
SERIOUSLY?
After more Googling, I found out what the different bandwidth caps are, etc. I called AT&T back, and asked them to read me some numbers (which they did) about my current usage (1 had 1SD/4HD fully turned on in my house, as well as maxing out my DSL speed)...
I was using LESS THAN HALF of the bandwidth capacity of my house. The Motorola boxes they provided me allow 10 streams or more of data... AT&T limits me to 4.
They told me that it's their policy to limit to 4 streams, and there are no exceptions.
I got off the phone, went to Cox.com, and ordered service. It's going to be $90/mo more than AT&T after the promotion period, but well worth it. We get 23/2 internet, unlimited phone, most of the same programming (swap Showtime for HBO), and I can record my 2 shows at once, PLUS have all the other TVs watching separate programming. My daughter, son, and wife can watch HD channels, while we record 2 others (while watching one of them) in the living room. I can even put one on in the basement. My limit with 5 boxes is 6 shows... 2 on the main TV, 1 on each additional. That's a huge difference from AT&T limiting me to, and I had to do it.
That's my experience.
