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Anyone here have AT&T U-Verse?
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olePigeon
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Aug 13, 2009, 02:28 PM
 
So the city ran our lightrail down the street I live on, and with it, they put down fiber cabling. I checked Verizon and AT&T periodically to see if I could get fiber internet, but it always came back negative. The other day I ran into an AT&T guy and he said that we should have fiber in my area. So he hopped onto his laptop and checked, turns out that we do have fiber. Apparently the problem was that when the technician was flagging addresses for fiber connection, he forgot to put our address down. Everyone else was flagged correctly, just not us.

In any event, we can now get AT&T U-Verse which is VDSL. It's fiber to the node, then copper to the home either via ethernet or coax; so it's not quite fiber-to-the-home. However, it's not shared.

I'm too far for normal DSL and Comcast is ing useless between 5PM and 11PM. How useless you may ask? Let me put it this way: changing channels will cause you to drop from online games. That's how useless. Between the designated times, I can't even stream Hulu.

So I'm excited about the prospects of U-Verse. Anyone here have it? They say you get your own line and that it's not shard, so the speeds they advertise are actually close to what you get.
"…I contend that we are both atheists. I just believe in one fewer god than
you do. When you understand why you dismiss all the other possible gods,
you will understand why I dismiss yours." - Stephen F. Roberts
     
nonhuman
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Aug 13, 2009, 02:37 PM
 
Sadly my choices are Comcast Cable, RCN Cable, and Verizon DSL. I'm biding my time with Comcast because it's the cheapest until we can get FiOS.
     
olePigeon  (op)
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Aug 13, 2009, 02:39 PM
 
I like FiOS better than U-Verse. Cheaper and faster. Unfortunately Verizon doesn't operate in my area.
"…I contend that we are both atheists. I just believe in one fewer god than
you do. When you understand why you dismiss all the other possible gods,
you will understand why I dismiss yours." - Stephen F. Roberts
     
CharlesS
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Aug 13, 2009, 02:48 PM
 
I just got fed up with waiting for AT&T to set up fiber-optic in my city, and switched to Comcast. To be fair, it's not completely AT&T's fault, since there's a lot of NIMBY going on over here every time they puts up a VRAD box somewhere due to them being big and ugly. Of course, now that I've switched away from AT&T, with my luck this means they'll finally get it set up soon. But maybe not - the community organization that's been fighting to stop AT&T from putting the boxes up has posted "Victory!" on the top of their web site - they apparently successfully petitioned the city council to keep AT&T from setting up their boxes here.

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ghporter
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Aug 13, 2009, 08:53 PM
 
From an undisclosed inside source, UVerse is pretty cool. You can get up to 18Mbps down VDSL speeds, more TV channels than should be humanly possible, your home phone handled by that same connection (with lots of bells and whistles) all for a single price on a single bill. Not too shabby from what I understand.

Also, it's my impression that AT&T understands this "zero downtime for phones" thing in a way that cable companies just don't get. While I don't think they'll guarantee "five nines" reliability, I'll bet that UVerse hardware is much more likely to keep on working no matter what happens, as opposed to cable hardware that often goes down for silly reasons.

Glenn -----OTR/L, MOT, Tx
     
Big Mac
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Aug 14, 2009, 05:30 PM
 
I have it and like it a lot. FIOS is certainly a higher quality service, but Uverse is a great competitor to cable and satellite.

"The natural progress of things is for liberty to yield and government to gain ground." TJ
     
mduell
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Aug 14, 2009, 06:14 PM
 
UVerse is great for internet. The TV is horrible.
     
Big Mac
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Aug 14, 2009, 06:16 PM
 
Seriously? The TV is great! The U400 package (which has pretty much all pay channels) is priced awesomely. One DVR can be controlled and played back from the other STBs. I even like the Microsoft designed DVR interface.

"The natural progress of things is for liberty to yield and government to gain ground." TJ
     
dowNNshift
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Aug 14, 2009, 11:26 PM
 
I have FTTN U-Verse and absolutely love it. It's a 25 down / 1.5 up link, and 7 mbps is reserved for IPTV leaving 18 mbps for raw internet and VOIP (or vPOTS).

In real every-day usage I get 17490 down and 1480 up consistently.

The IPTV is alright, its no DirecTV or Dish Network killer but it beats the heck outta doing business with Comcrap. I have the base TV package and get my High Def Locals as well as 50ish HD cable channels. The set top boxes have all the modern connections to support the best of HDTVs, but one feature I like the best is how the set top box connects to the modem/router via Ethernet. I laugh that the setup boxes have Windows CE as their OS. They are not terribly buggy though, mine rarely if ever locks up.

A con is the large size of the 2Wire router/modem ATT issues. Its about the size of an APC battery backup. Everything has to run thru it, yep everything. All vPOTS phones, internet, IPTV. So its best to keep it in an easily accessible place. I do this stuff for a living, so I custom wired mine so that I can have the modem classily tucked out of the way.

If you're looking for awesome internet, U-Verse is awesome. If you're looking for a Cable TV alternative, U-Verse is alright but getting better.
     
Knof8
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Aug 15, 2009, 11:01 AM
 
I"ve had U-Verse for almost a year now, and I've been really happy with it. The cost alone is a much better price than Comcast, and U-Verse always seems to be doing good deals.

Examples of good deals would be: for the first 3 months I had U-300, plus movie channels, phone, and internet for less about $100/month. Right now I've got all the HBO channels free for 2 months. I also dig how you can set up/manage your recordings online. This has come in handy when I'm traveling and forgot to set up a show to be recorded.
     
mduell
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Aug 15, 2009, 12:36 PM
 
Originally Posted by Big Mac View Post
Seriously? The TV is great! The U400 package (which has pretty much all pay channels) is priced awesomely. One DVR can be controlled and played back from the other STBs. I even like the Microsoft designed DVR interface.
The number of channels or DVR sharing isn't the problem. The constant audio desync and drop out issues are the problem.
     
Big Mac
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Aug 16, 2009, 06:51 PM
 
Doesn't ever happen here, mduell. Our TV service has been essentially flawless here in Cali. You should definitely complain because that isn't normal and shouldn't be accepted.

Regarding the 2WIRE router, it's on the large side for a router but it isn't too large. And in comparison to standard DirecTV service that we had before U-Verse, I'm much happier now.

"The natural progress of things is for liberty to yield and government to gain ground." TJ
     
lexapro
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Aug 16, 2009, 07:06 PM
 
Sorry I do not have U-Verse.
     
msuper69
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Aug 19, 2009, 02:13 PM
 
I've had U-Verse since 08/08.

The thing that bothers me the most is having to use tuners that run Windows CE. The user interface is not as responsive as it should be and will every now and then lock up requiring a power recycle. When this happens, it takes at least 10 minutes before you can watch TV again.

The DVR has been replaced as a couple of recordings were hanging on the old one. Eventually they would continue but 5 minutes or more of the recording would be skipped. This is still happening with the new DVR. My suspicion is that there are I/O errors on the hard drive. Odd that it would happen with 2 in a row.

I'm at the lower end of speed as far as broadband goes; it's not great but serviceable. I wonder why most pages won't load all the images? I'm constantly having to reload pages.

If I had a clear view of the Southern sky, I would get DirecTV in a minute. But there are too many trees in the way and I'm not about to cut down a tree just so I can get satellite TV.
     
olePigeon  (op)
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Aug 19, 2009, 02:22 PM
 
I mostly just want it for internet. I couldn't care less about the TV and phone aspect of the package.
"…I contend that we are both atheists. I just believe in one fewer god than
you do. When you understand why you dismiss all the other possible gods,
you will understand why I dismiss yours." - Stephen F. Roberts
     
CharlesS
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Aug 19, 2009, 03:27 PM
 
Originally Posted by msuper69 View Post
I'm at the lower end of speed as far as broadband goes; it's not great but serviceable. I wonder why most pages won't load all the images? I'm constantly having to reload pages.
Dunno, I just switched to Comcast because of that little issue. It was such a joke - even when paying my AT&T bill, the "Submit" button was an image that wouldn't load, so I'd have to guess where the stupid button was physically on the page, just to pay my bill.

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olePigeon  (op)
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Aug 19, 2009, 03:46 PM
 
If you live in light residential, I'm sure Comcast is great. However, if you live in an apartment complex like I do where your only option is Comcast and everyone in the apartment complex has it, it renders the service useless.
"…I contend that we are both atheists. I just believe in one fewer god than
you do. When you understand why you dismiss all the other possible gods,
you will understand why I dismiss yours." - Stephen F. Roberts
     
CharlesS
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Aug 19, 2009, 04:43 PM
 
I do live in an apartment complex where most likely most of the people here have Comcast, and it works great. Even the upload speeds I'm getting are over twice AT&T's advertised download speeds.

With AT&T, on the other hand, every other site I'd try to load would time out, and when a page did load, about half of the images on it it would be question marks. There's no question about which is better here.

Ticking sound coming from a .pkg package? Don't let the .bom go off! Inspect it first with Pacifist. Macworld - five mice!
     
turtle777
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Aug 19, 2009, 05:05 PM
 
^^^ Seconded.

UVerse uplink speeds are a joke. That's why I never considered switching. Comcast (real world) uplink speeds are great.

-t
     
Big Mac
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Aug 19, 2009, 05:06 PM
 
I was actually having the reload problem on one of my Macs until I added OpenDNS to the Network pane of that Mac. It has been flawless since. I guess AT&T still needs to learn how to administer DNS, but it's not like I haven't gone through flaky DNS with other ISPs. My DVR and STBs never lock up, and the UI they have is responsive. Things have been improved even more now that the firmware upgrade allows an STB to fully control the DVR. But I'm on the newest generation hardware. I am so happy that we ditched DirecTV for it (we had DirecTV for years and they only once offered an upgrade to our hardware or channel lineup until we cancelled), but YMMV.
( Last edited by Big Mac; Aug 19, 2009 at 05:16 PM. )

"The natural progress of things is for liberty to yield and government to gain ground." TJ
     
ghporter
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Aug 19, 2009, 09:26 PM
 
AT&T has regional DNS servers, supposedly to allow faster responses in each region. That's a LOT of servers to administer, and they frankly keep shuffling them so much that you have to wonder if they CAN administer that many. My DSL has been rock-solid on OpenDNS, where it was unpredictably slow or just inoperative when the router was set to get DNS settings automatically.

Glenn -----OTR/L, MOT, Tx
     
Gregg
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Aug 21, 2009, 09:41 AM
 
Originally Posted by lexapro View Post
Sorry I do not have U-Verse.
Don't be depressed about it, neither do I.

Hope that makes you feel better.


I had to post in a thread about TV signals:
Ya gotta applaud those bunnies for sacrificing their hearing just so some guy in Yonkers can have better TV reception.
     
olePigeon  (op)
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Oct 6, 2009, 04:06 PM
 
I finally got U-Verse installed yesterday! Yes, it really did take them nearly 2 months to do it. What happened was that we ran into the problem of only my address not being available for U-Verse, nevermind the people next to me (we share a wall) and below me (we share a floor/ceiling) are eligible for U-Verse. The reason was that when some AT&T technician was there inputing all the addresses so that they'd have Residential ID numbers, he or she simply forgot to put our address in.

OK, simple mistake. They can just fix that in a jiffy, right? Or not. It took me almost 2 months of emailing, letters, phone calls, and threatening to go to the newspaper did they finally get someone in the upper tier of things to email their technicians to finally assign a RID number to our address. I'm tempted to write to the newspaper anyway.

The blind desk monkey must've thrown poo at the wrong button because all they did was invert the Excel spreadsheet. Now our address is the only address that qualifies for U-Verse in our complex, everyone else can't get it. I'm debating whether or not to tell them that.

Anyway, so far I'm extremely impressed with the performance of the service (not AT&T's complete incompetence to get it installed.) I actually get nearly the advertised speed. $35/month and I consistently get 5860/980 on the DSL Reports Speed Test on my 6Mbit/1Mbit line. I also get a 30 ms ping when playing online with 0% packet loss. This is opposed to getting around 1200/60 -- yes, the upload was only marginally better than dialup -- with my 16Mbit/2Mbit cable, with its 3500+ ms ping and 12% packet loss. AT&T's service is also over the exact same coaxial cable that I used to have Comcast with.

I can actually turn the TV on and change channels without my roommate getting kicked off the World of Warcraft servers.

Comcast. I'm glad to be rid of them. They didn't want fix the heaping pile of they sold me, so they lost me as a customer permanently.
"…I contend that we are both atheists. I just believe in one fewer god than
you do. When you understand why you dismiss all the other possible gods,
you will understand why I dismiss yours." - Stephen F. Roberts
     
olePigeon  (op)
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Oct 6, 2009, 09:29 PM
 
Another cool thing about U-Verse, my BitTorrent isn't filtered like it is on Comcast. When I had Cable, my BT client would take about 10 minutes before peers would start to connect. I even made sure the port was open and the program registered it as open.

With U-Verse, the second I start Transmission the download starts with 80% of the peers connecting. My download speed quickly caps out. I'm lovin' this.
"…I contend that we are both atheists. I just believe in one fewer god than
you do. When you understand why you dismiss all the other possible gods,
you will understand why I dismiss yours." - Stephen F. Roberts
     
Cold Warrior
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Oct 6, 2009, 09:32 PM
 
Comcast eventually stopped filtering. Or should have.
     
olePigeon  (op)
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Oct 6, 2009, 09:39 PM
 
Originally Posted by Cold Warrior View Post
Comcast eventually stopped filtering. Or should have.
They were told to stop filtering, but they never did. Now they say they're "delaying" traffic. Whatever the hell that means.
"…I contend that we are both atheists. I just believe in one fewer god than
you do. When you understand why you dismiss all the other possible gods,
you will understand why I dismiss yours." - Stephen F. Roberts
     
Gregg
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Oct 7, 2009, 11:20 AM
 
You got the bundle of TV, telephone, and internet? ...or just TV and internet?

Anyway, I looked into U-verse and decided to stick with Dish Network. I recently upgraded to the DVR receiver, and kept my AT&T budget DSL and long distance as is. The U-verse Patrol has been out in our neighborhood several times, and I get all kinds of paper junk mail about it. The cost is higher than Dish, and I don't mind that I can "only" record two shows at once. (or watch one live and record one) Four at a time... who does that?
Ya gotta applaud those bunnies for sacrificing their hearing just so some guy in Yonkers can have better TV reception.
     
olePigeon  (op)
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Oct 7, 2009, 12:20 PM
 
I got it just for internet. I get 3 months of free TV with it. I don't watch enough TV for me to care, most of my favorite shows are online (Hulu, BBC, etc.)

The TV is good, I guess. I don't have a frame of comparison except Comcast, and from my perspective, everything is better than Comcast. They have a feature where you can set the DVR to record shows from their website. Makes it a lot easier than fumbling with the TV controller.
"…I contend that we are both atheists. I just believe in one fewer god than
you do. When you understand why you dismiss all the other possible gods,
you will understand why I dismiss yours." - Stephen F. Roberts
     
Thorzdad
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Oct 7, 2009, 05:57 PM
 
In my neck of the woods, we have a choice between Comcast or U-Verse. If you look beyond the teaser 6-month pricing, they both seem to be a wash for us, price-wise. Right now, we're with Comcast. Just internet and basic cable.
     
olePigeon  (op)
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Oct 8, 2009, 04:59 PM
 
Comcast is $60/month for internet.
U-Verse is $35/month for internet.

Of course pricing is localized for these companies.
"…I contend that we are both atheists. I just believe in one fewer god than
you do. When you understand why you dismiss all the other possible gods,
you will understand why I dismiss yours." - Stephen F. Roberts
     
Thorzdad
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Oct 8, 2009, 05:53 PM
 
You need to compare like products. In my area, for 12Mbps service, the two are dead-even on price. About $55/mo.
But, as you say, pricing is localized.
     
   
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