Miami / Ft. Lauderdale, FL - HDTV - Page 220

PQ is picture quality.

Has anyone experienced AT&T U-Verse yet? It just became available in my area, and I'm curious as to how it is.

Comments on PQ, HD channel selection, installation, technical apspects, etc. are all welcome.

I have been using it for a year now:

HDPQ < Cable but for me it is still very good, others have complained, you will need to evaluate for yourself
SDPQ > Cable
Channel Selection is very good they have a lot of HD channels, VOD
see http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showt...=#post15464035
Internet service > DSL
I am not using the phone service
Price < Cable

Overall I like the service the DVR is nice and works well in my home, note that there are some technical limitations. If you are within 3000' of the VRAD you should get 2HD/2SD streams, if farther you may get 1HD/3SD. You are limited to a total of (4) video streams right now but you can record 4 and watch 4 recordings at once. Also two TVs watching the same channel only count as a single stream.

AT&T is heading toward VDSL2 which will allow 3HD/2SD streams and 2HD/2SD out to 5000'. If they get this in place and can make a bit of improvement to their HD PQ the service would be perfect.

The picture quality is dependent upon the channel, some look downright terrible such as spike tv or surprisingly strong ex. ESPNnews

Are you watching HD programming on Spike? Try to catch The Ultimate Fighter. Some of the stuff might be stretched SD posing as HD.

Thanks for the detailed response. Very interesting, to say the least.

Is there any way to find out how far I am from the VRAD? I've seen BellSouth/AT&T trucks working in the area, but I have no idea what they've been doing.

Not really since the copper lines are not necessarily a straight line run from the VRAD. Really can't tell until they come out and run the test.

I do know, however, that nothing's been disturbed for at least a mile in any direction from my home. So I'm assuming that they ran something to a point further away, then they connect that to the existing phone lines. Good guess or bad guess?

AT&T will install the VRAD somewhere local to you, probably next to their other equipment. They run Fiber to the VRAD and then wire up the local copper line to your house using your existing phone lines. The location of the VRAD is critical to your ability to get service levels as the copper line is the weak link in their architecture. A VRAD looks like:

Any updates on Comcast in South Florida? Is Davie still the only city with the new HD channels?

Thanks!

There have been a lot of hickups with some of the system. Examples with some channels not showing any information on the channel lineup and some channels that I pay for not showing up such as NFL redzone saying i have no authorization. I called and they said many are having these problems, so I think until they iron out the hickups it might be a little while for the rest of you guys.

stonecrd, thanks for the visual and the info. Time to go looking for one of these beasts to get an approximation.

A couple more questions:
a) If they use my existing phone line, would that affect my POTS (or vice-versa)?
b) Since I already have a roof antenna hooked up to my in-house coax wiring, would I still be able to use that as is?

Thanks in advance.

Oh wow. Thanks for the update ortegaj!

I just noticed that Comcast added a new HD channel to my lineup last night.

465 - Lifetime HD

Granted I don't watch Lifetime but I'm glad at least the process as begun. I live in Coral Springs/Parkland area in North Broward. I would advise other Comcast customers in that area to see if any other HD channels has been added to their collection.

A) yes you can leave your phone line and they will split it or you can subscribe to their VOIP service. If you have DSL coming in that has to be shutdown as they will convert you to the AT&T VDSL service

B) Depends, the STBs are connected to the Router either by RG45 or Coax (HPNA), if your house is wired for ethernet then the RG45 is best if not they may wire this for you if it is easy (ask politely) or try to use the existing coax. If they use the existing coax then you would need a seperate segment for the antenna since you cannot mix the HPNA with any other signal.

My DSL is already split off from the POTS (aka "home run" I believe), as the house is wired for 2 discreet POTS lines. If I wanted to keep my POTS as is, could they use the other line already used by the DSL modem for U-verse?


Aside from the 2-line POTS wiring, the house only has coax (really meant for cable) coming in from outside through a central point going up to the attic, then branching out to various rooms from there via splitters. Right now the coax is connected to my roof antenna.

In trying to figure out the complete wiring, it appears that:
a) Fiber optic goes from some central AT&T location to each of the VRADs.
b) Existing copper that the POTS runs on carries everything from the VRAD to each house.
c) Within the house, a router (or some device) is connected to a wall phone jack, and everything is distributed from there via Coax or ethernet (TV/Internet), or POTS wiring (digital phone).

Am I close?

Just ordered the 18mbps U-Verse high-speed to replace my 6mbps DSL. I will be using just the internet service since I live in a building with Directv included in the common charges. I hope I can keep my netwok "as is' and just use the residential Gateway as a modem to my wireless N router. The U-Verse gateway sucks with wireless G only.

Not sure about your POTS, I would think so.

The copper line is terminated with somethign called a NID. The NID can be twisted pair or coax. If coax they run a line to a diplexer and this goes to the Router (RG) if not coax then it is just twisted pair ethernet. The coax line is bidirectional for the RG, the coax is split at teh diplexer and fed back into your home coax through a splitter. UV requires good coax to work correctly so they will replace all of the cable ends with compression ends both on the jacks and any cables you use to the STB.

Again if twisted pair they just run a line from the RG to the STB. You can also be mixed so in my system the RG is next to my HT and I use ethernet to the STB for my 65" DLP and use coax for all of the other rooms.

You can set it up so that your wireless lan sits in the DMZ of the UV router and it will work fine. I do this as I segregate the TV traffic from the computer traffic. You just have to use to different IP networks, turn off the internal UV wireless and let your N router do the DHCP.

Thanks for the info. I actually plan to run everything from the existing router and use the RG exclusively as a modem. There will be just 1 network, the one I already have.I can use the other LAN ports on the RG to hook up devices that will only use the internet but not the local network, like my TV for example. Tech is coming and I will know how things go very soon.

Got everyting working but I have an issue wih my Xbox-360. I connected everything wih my D-Link dir-655 router but left the Xbox connected directly to the Residential Gateway. There is nothing I can do to make a device connected directly to the RG to be recognized by my local network, managed by the router. In other words, I can't make he Xbox see the other devices connected to the router, including my PC.

I put the DIR-655 in the DMZplus mode on the RG and that's basically the only thing I changed ,besides deactivating the RG wireless. How can I make the devices hooked to the RG see the other ones connected to the router ?

Thanks.

stonecrd, thanks very much for all the info. Super big help.

Try checking the internet forum on UTalk, they have some very technical IT people doing more advanced routing and can probably help.

http://utalk.att.com/utalk/board?board.id=HSIA

Also noticed 479 - MLB Network HD a few days ago.

most importantly NFL Redzone HD Ch. 390

Question for those using ota. I noticed WLTV TV 23 signal is now displaying with the black bars on the sides including their hd. I noticed the same for Telefutura. Why? WPLG for example displays the black bars for its non hd but displays full screen during the hd news for example not so with WLTV 23 or Telefutura. Therefore it appears to be an issue with the stations I mentioned as all others have seen no change in the way the image self adjust

On another note I remember about a year ago The Doctors transmitted hd in full screen for several weeks then went back to bars on the side. So is all hd now going the route of the bars on the side like WLTV even on hd programming? that makes no sense at all.

EDIT: I just found this which makes even less sense http://www.univision.com/content/con...ml?cid=2194649

So they're claiming I will now see black bars on the screen after their Dec 21, 2009 on their station. They say you will know its hd because the image will be "spectacular" and you will see a "symbol" on the screen. Wait what? so now I get to see a spectacular image with black bars on the side on my big screen unlike others that transmit hd program where you not only know its on hd because of the sharpness but also because "THEY EXPAND THE IMAGE".

As far as I'm aware, Univision has no HD programming at this time. They've started converting their stations over, but no actual HD programming yet.

- Trip

Hello Trip, would that explain why in other stations the image expands in some programs and the news for example and in 23 everything is with the black bars on the sides? Does that mean their news is also not hd either? I see no difference in Channel 23 image quality now vs old other than those annoying black bars they now have.

When the image expands, that is HD content, or at the very least wide SD. When the black bars are shown, you're seeing SD content that's being upconverted to HD.

- Trip

Catch WLTV first program" Tournament of Roses Parade" in high definition, which will be seen in 16x9 HD live on January 1st.

Two questions for those in Weston and Coral Springs with Advanced Cable Communications. The DVR I have (I believe) is the DCH6416. I recently bought a wireless bridge and switch to connect my BD player and Panny to the internet. The DCH has an input for ethernet connection but I don't know if that is active and if so what it does. Anyone know?

The other question has to do with program information which is transmitted from ACC. When I connect my two TVs to OTA, I get the station identifier, program name, remaining time and brief synopsis of the program. No program information is received when going through the cable card on my 2nd TV. I guess that is because it is assumed that the guide would be used, which of course is not available on the cable card. This is probably more of a statement then a question as I don't expect that this is a user setting.