AT&T U-verse

We got our AT&T U-verse service installed today. It took a couple of hours, but the tech did a good job. We decided to only get the TV service and not the DSL because Wanda’s employer pays for our Internet access through Time Warner.  I was sick of maintaining the separate media centers, and getting direct HD content is nice.

It has an amazingly clear picture (even with SD channels), and I like the menu interface much better than Time Warner’s. A few drawbacks include having to pay for each TV receiver (though that’s standard with other digital providers too), the menu includes channels that we don’t get in our package (so I have to scroll through a lot), and currently we can only watch recorded (DVR) shows on one TV. However, the tech said that by the end of the month, AT&T should be rolling out the “Home DVR” service, which lets you watch recorded shows on all TVs (it’s a simple software update).

One cool feature that we won’t get unless we sign up for DSL is the ability to record shows remotely. That would be cool, but it’s hard to complain about free broadband.

The technician was from Milwaukee. He said they’ve been busy lately due to the dispute between our local Fox affiliate and Time Warner (that means no Fox on Time Warner). He said AT&T was bring people in from other regions so they could keep up with demand. We didn’t switch because of the Fox thing, though. I wanted a maintenance-free, quality solution, and I didn’t like Time Warner’s DVR interface. AT&T’s interface is very decent (albeit a little slow). It’s based on Windows, so getting used to it was pretty easy because it’s very similar to Media Center.

October 18th, 2008  Television   Tags: at&t, digital, dvr, tv, more...