AT&T U-verse HDTV - Page 130

Only if you are on DSL, not UVerse TV & Internet. Most people do not worry about the caps if they use it for normal use. Even when I ran UVerse Realtime, the most use we would see, while watching Netflix during the month, downloading large file updates, and my son playing games on his Xbox 360, was 55 gig.

I just got UVerse yesterday and I think i'm going to switch back to Direct TV. The PQ is as bad as it was when i left 2.5 yrs ago.

Pros: Fast receiver, price, no need for contract, Showtime and Starz included in U300.

Cons: HD pic quality (viewed on a 60" Kuro), lack of the major sports packages, no Pandora, inability to set Faves as a default guide view.

Internet is fine, i'll be keeping that.

Thank you bonscott87, High Gear, dishrich, and Timothy31 for the replies to my questions. Very helpful. I'm going to talk to "customer retention" at DirecTV before making any changes .. see what they want to do to keep me. The 3-HD recordings limit (if that still the same as what I had last year) is a real sticking point. Especially when sports are going, there are too many times when I need an extra recording spot. :-( If it weren't for the money, I'd like to have both DirecTV and U-Verse - pros and cons with each. :-)

I'd suggest you put DirecTV on "suspend" or vacation. You can do that for up to 6 months and you have no charges during that time but can keep all your equipment. Get Uverse and see if it's something you can handle. That way you don't have issues getting DirecTV back if you decide to keep it. And if you do decide to ditch Uverse and keep DirecTV you may be in a better negotiating position as they can see you suspended your account for a month or two and you tell them it was because you were trying Uverse out and now you'd like to see what DirecTV will do to keep you.

That's a good idea. But is AT&T currently doing a "no risk" trial? That was the case last year when I gave it a go - made me much more willing to test. I didn't even get to the point of suspending DirecTV, as I was done testing in 2 weeks. (However, I had to argue with AT&T on quite a few calls to end the trial without any payments. It all worked out in the end, but took awhile.)

If you are close enough to get the 4 HD streams you can record 4 HD, of course that means you can't watch something else at the same time. You'll only be able to watch something you are recording or something you have recorded on the dvr.

Good rule of thumb, if you qualify for 24M of Internet you can get 4HD streams. For 18M you can get 3 HD streams and for 12M you can get 2 HD streams. Most customers qualify for 4HD streams.

I hardly ever, ever, ever watch live TV ... yuck! ;-) So the number of sumultaneous recordings is the concern. (BTW ... I currently have 2 DirecTV DVRs - 4 tuners. That's actually down from the 3 DVRs I had a couple of years ago.)

Hmmm ... I need to check my info. Last year I was *promised* 4 HD streams, but only setup for 3 (+ 1 SD). Of course that "promise" was from an independent sales rep (door-to-door) who I'm sure got his commission based on sign-ups. I tried to get tech help to see if that config could be "fixed", but the phone-CSRs didn't know how to answer any questions not in the "script".

I still have U-verse Voice (phone) and Internet - so I should be able to see how high I can go - if I wanted to upgrade my speed. I remember there were some config numbers that could be accessed to "read" the throughput of the line. Were those only on the DVR? Or can I get that info from my Internet modem?

And you can't count on that either. I can get 24 meg Internet but our area isn't provisioned for 4 HD streams (yet).

All markets have had 4HD capability for some time. If you have the 32Mx5M profile showing in your RG profile, it should be working regardless of the actual Internet tier that you have chosen. The only exception would be if you are provisioned over an iNID in a pair bonded location. A quick call to Care should be able to resolve this provided your line is rated for the 32M profile.

You can check that in your RG configuration. The 32Mx5M profile equals the ability to get 4 HD streams.

So my gateway says my Broadband "User Rate" is 32342 kbs down and 5040 kbs up. And my "Rate Cap" is 32344 kbs. Is that the 32Mx5M I'm looking for?

Yes. TexasJames, download Uverse Realtime from http://www.uvrealtime.com and post the IP Profile screenshot. It will tell you what the max rate & distance, along with some other info.

Cool app ... lots to explore. Here is the screenshot from UV Realtime. Thanks in advance for any analysis/interpretation.

I would use it to snoop on my son to see what channel he was watching, or if the box was on in his room, when he was asleep. I makes the info on the gateway more user friendly.

Well I got me some U-Verse (TV) on order. :-) They say I should get 4 HD streams and it is noted all over the "order" - so I'm hopeful. Going to try one wireless receiver and the rest wired (ethernet, not coax).. The discounts ($28/mo for 6 months on U300 and free HD upgrade for 1 year) made it a compelling choice to try out, even if I dump it in 6 months. I'll suspend my DirecTV during that time - as soon as I clear the DVRs of shows, so I'll have options in 6 months. I even upgraded my internet one grade for free (for 6 months). Thanks all for the help. It will be interesting to see what has changed in the 1 year since I last dabbled with it.

They must have updated the streams. Right now watching Rocklahoma on HDNet, and I am seeing 11.147 to 11.5meg. No artifacts, pixeling, sparkilies with the drummer. Now on close ups though, it does appear that Puddle of Mudd's drummer is kind of in a slow mo, but other than that, the best I have seen for a concert on HDNET.

Even the Indy looked better than it did last year.

So after the long weekend with U-verse, some first impressions and follow-ups to my "issues" from last year:

- Simultaneous HD recordings. I *am* setup for 4 HD streams, as I watched a different HD stream on each receiver (4) just after the install completed. But, it appears I can only record 3 streams at a time. :-( My "system resources" says "Streams: 0 SD/4 HD (WAN); 1 SD/3 HD (Ingress)". Is this normal, or do I need to call and complain?

- HD quality. I don't know if something changed since last summer ... but so far I'm pretty impressed! The picture looks darn good on every HD channel I've looked at. I've seen a little bit of blocking and compression artifacts, mostly on sports. But it seems infrequent enough to easily tolerate. (And DirecTV seems to have up'd their compression recently, so it is not all roses there either.)

- Sound. I'm still getting a few sound "drop outs" when using digital audio, with optical cable to a Sony AVR. But it is an older AVR, so the issue might be there. The dropouts are infrequent, honestly no worse than with DirecTV. (The issue there is I was often running CE/test software, so glitches of any type were usually blamed on that test setup.) And so far I haven't had any problems with sound that is out-of-sync from the video.

- On-Screen Guide. I'm still not a fan of seeing both SD and HD channels in the Guide (and in Search results) even if they are 1000 apart. My wife doesn't always remember the difference so she'll setup a recording based on whichever she sees first. Looking at the channel numbers just isn't part of her "process". In addition, there are a couple of channels I watch that are only available in SD (e.g., BBCA and GAC) - so I'm sometimes in those channels. I don't like having to go, "wait, let me see if there is an HD version" before I finish whatever I'm doing. (If they are going to be listed twice, I'd rather they be together than far apart.) And I still have similar complaints with non-subscribed channels being shown in the Guide (and in Search results). Especially in Searches, I get tired of weeding through pages of non-applicable shows to find one that I can access. Conversely, thank you "bonscott87" for the info to push Enter in the Guide to get the popout that allows jumping to a specific date/time. Never knew that existed, but very useful. (Now I wonder how many other shortcuts are hidden from view?)

- Search. The lack of saved searches or advanced search options is a big oversight. :-( Already I am struggling to find my sporting events that appear on various channels (e.g., Texas Rangers baseball is on FSSW, Fox, ESPN, and/or local 21). I'm going to have to check out the web and iPad app, as suggested. See if that is easier to use.

- Scheduling Recordings. All good here. I'd like to set recording defaults so I'm not always changing the options. But after getting through the initial load of series I don't expect to be in that option all that often. And the auto 1 minute pre-pad is usually sufficient, but it would be even better to add that as a recording setup option, like you can with extending the recording. ("Timothy31" - I see the option to extend the end time of a recording, but not the start.)

- Watching Shows. The speeds of the various Fast Forward options are much improved from my last experience. The increments feel right (I think there is an addition setting now), and playback is very smooth (much better than DirecTV). One complaint here is there should be a bigger "auto jump-back" when coming out of FFwd - to prevent "overshooting". And I stillnwant to be able to "stack" the jump-forward button presses. I know there are at least 4, 6, or 8 commercials that I want to jump over - depending on the show. Let me do that and get it over instead of press-wait-press-wait-etc...

Your setup is working is working correctly. The DVR maxes out at 3 simultaneous HD recordings and 1HD stream on another STB in your home. If you are watching the DVR with 3HD recordings in progress you either have to watch 1 of the 3 recordings or previously recorded content.


There have been lots of improvements to the transcoders within the network. A new one has been deployed that has made solid improvements to PQ.


From what I understand, all prior known issues with sound dropouts on digital audio have been resolved. Not to say there aren't still a few out there because it is impossible to test every setup available on the market.


Here you go - Menu>>Options>>Channel Options>>Hide Channels


I miss that feature from my original Tivo but have found using the web portal and iPad app to make it much easier to search content. The iPad app is really top shelf.


The only way that I have been been able to find to start a recording early is to do a manual recording. That doesn't help out with season passes but to be honest I don't think I have missed the start of any show with the default settings.


There were some additional enhancements made to the ff/rew controls when the pause/rewind/ff feature was added to STB capabilities last year.

Huh, this is a new one for me.
So this is different then setting up a favorites list?
This will hide channels I don't want to see even on the default channel listing?

If so then I will be doing this tonight for sure and hide most of the SD channels and others I just don't care to see.

And I sure wish that Uverse allowed you to assign a favorite channel list as the default guide listing.

The above steps will remove those channels from the guide and search results.

I started off using Favorites, as I'd come from Comcast, but quickly found that Hide Channels is much more convenient.

The initial setup is a greater pain in the butt, as you have to go three levels deep into the menus, and once you're there, you cannot go quickly to the channel you want to Show/Hide by entering its number. You have to page through until you get to it, and there are lots of pages.

But once you set things up, you can just flip channels up and down, and it will only go through channels you haven't hidden. When you pull up the Guide, same thing. And as mentioned, those channels won't even come up in a search. It's like they're not even on your box (which is the idea).

We've hidden all SD channels for which there is an HD version (which is most of them), kids channels, sports channels we don't care about, foreign language channels, and of course all the channels we don't actually get. It's really nice flipping channels and using the Guide and Search and only ever seeing channels you actually care about.

That sounds perfect. I have had Uverse for about a year and had no idea this option existed and I really dug thru the menu's when I first got it. Love the fact that the hidden channels don't even show up in searches. Love it.

Ditto! From the menu description it sounded like it only applied to the Guide. I was very happy to see it work with the searches too! Thanks Harley_Dude for the great tip (and the other info in your reply-post). Now ... I just have to figure out what I have duped in SD/HD and then devote a block of time to that setup. Good thing I got a recent channel list with the install. :-)

I noticed a better image on last week's Mad Men. It seems that something changed just recently to make the PQ much better. Audio dropouts have also seemed to have disappeared a couple of months ago.

Just wondering does anyone ever have an audio problem where the audio has an echo like effect on it and you have to change the channel to fix it?

I've never had that issue, just the dropout issue.

What connection are you using to the U-Verse box? Maybe there's a separate effect/EQ setting for that input that is causing it?

All tv's are connected via HDMI. Its happened on all the tv's even the ones that simply have audio through the speakers on the tv. The only tv hooked up to a stereo is mine and its hooked up via plain RCA audio cables. No surround system

I still want The Hallmark Channel and The Hallmark Movie Channel back. What's it been since U-Verse dropped them, over a year now? Boo, hiss!!!!