U Verse on my street: should I go for it? (home, purchase)

[anifani821]

I was wondering what kinds of experiences others have had w/ U Verse - hook up, satisfaction level and cost.

I remember one of our members had it put in and it was a very loooooong process.

So what about it? Anyone else have it?

I am fed up w/ Time Warner. It has gotten where I have to re-boot several times a DAY!!! The screen freezes. The screen goes black. Or . . . I get a message saying Please Wait, etc. So I am looking for different service and can't use Direct TV (line of sight problems - have already checked).

Advice, anyone?

[MrConfigT]

I'll tell you this....

I was calling time warner 3-4 times a week for service related issues and refunds.

I've had u-verse since Dec. 10th and I've had to call ONCE for an issue that was fixed within 30 minutes.

I really need to find the time to write my review of the service, but I am highly impressed with it.

[MrConfigT]

Originally Posted by anifani821

I remember one of our members had it put in and it was a very loooooong process.

That was me, 9am to 1am. But hey, that guy was dedicated to getting me working, I had 5 crews through the day getting the circuits hooked up correctly.

[TheEmissary]

Originally Posted by anifani821

I was wondering what kinds of experiences others have had w/ U Verse - hook up, satisfaction level and cost.

I remember one of our members had it put in and it was a very loooooong process.

So what about it? Anyone else have it?

I am fed up w/ Time Warner. It has gotten where I have to re-boot several times a DAY!!! The screen freezes. The screen goes black. Or . . . I get a message saying Please Wait, etc. So I am looking for different service and can't use Direct TV (line of sight problems - have already checked).

Advice, anyone?

Go for it Ani and don't look back!

AT&T U-verse | Total Home DVR | Advanced TV

[BrianH1970]

Originally Posted by anifani821

I was wondering what kinds of experiences others have had w/ U Verse - hook up, satisfaction level and cost.

I remember one of our members had it put in and it was a very loooooong process.

So what about it? Anyone else have it?

I am fed up w/ Time Warner. It has gotten where I have to re-boot several times a DAY!!! The screen freezes. The screen goes black. Or . . . I get a message saying Please Wait, etc. So I am looking for different service and can't use Direct TV (line of sight problems - have already checked).

Advice, anyone?

I'm jumping on it first chance I get for many of the same reasons. The "Please Wait" thing irks me like crazy, not to mention I've had stations become unavailable to "try again later" and menu freezes that result in me having to reboot. As soon as it becomes available along with the NHL Center Ice Package Time Warner is history.

That "please wait" thing really gets on me. You can't scroll a day in advance, sometimes just scrolling down, without seeing that message.

[MrConfigT]

Originally Posted by BrianH1970

I'm jumping on it first chance I get for many of the same reasons. The "Please Wait" thing irks me like crazy, not to mention I've had stations become unavailable to "try again later" and menu freezes that result in me having to reboot. As soon as it becomes available along with the NHL Center Ice Package Time Warner is history.

That "please wait" thing really gets on me. You can't scroll a day in advance, sometimes just scrolling down, without seeing that message.

uverse doesn't say please wait, but it is still slow sometimes. not as slow as TWC, but it's not exactly instant. But the remote login feature really makes it faster and worth while.

[BrianH1970]

Originally Posted by MrConfigT

uverse doesn't say please wait, but it is still slow sometimes. not as slow as TWC, but it's not exactly instant. But the remote login feature really makes it faster and worth while.

I'll take slow as opposed to a frozen black screen with the "please wait" message.

[TheEmissary]

Originally Posted by BrianH1970

I'm jumping on it first chance I get for many of the same reasons. The "Please Wait" thing irks me like crazy, not to mention I've had stations become unavailable to "try again later" and menu freezes that result in me having to reboot. As soon as it becomes available along with the NHL Center Ice Package Time Warner is history.

That "please wait" thing really gets on me. You can't scroll a day in advance, sometimes just scrolling down, without seeing that message.

Brian, Ani - I had that "please wait" thing going on for a while. The funny thing is, it happened more on my bedroom tv that used the Scientific Atlanta Explorer 4250 HDC box, but never did it on the family room tv which was connected to a Scientific Atlanta Explorer 8300 HD box. I rebooted the bedroom box a few times (pulled the plug out of the back of it) and eventually the "please wait" went away. It seemed to be worse about 2:00 AM when it would go through its bi-or tri-weekly "firmware" update. Most of you aren't up that late, but it was a pain when I'd be watching Discovery HD Theatre and it would go throught the reboot process which killed the show for 20 minutes. Finally we're getting Sci-Fi channel in HD on Feb 13th. NYC's TWC now has 100 HD channels!

[anifani821]

Would you believe - I swear it's the truth - since writing this post, I have had to re-boot YET AGAIN for the THIRD TIME today. All I wanted to do was switch from Ch. 33 to CH 34 to see CNBC's stock wrap up. That is on one TV. On the one downstairs, rebooted it at 8 am, b/c when I turned it on, it would not change channels. I don't watch the downstairs TV much during the day - just when cooking, doing laundry, etc. So why I have to keep re-booting - mystery to me!!!

Brian - I have the Please Wait thing going on . . . the "remote won't work" thing going on . .. the screen goes totally black thing going on . . . and when I try to check the schedule - I would say about 30% or more of the time - it says "not available." Now, one could understand this happening occasionally - but it is every day, all times of the day.

This weekend, I wanted to watch WALL E "on demand." We wanted to watch it while having breakfast in bed. So I tried at 8 am to log in and purchase my movie. "This service is not available at this time." I tried at 9 am. Still, same message. Just for the heck of it, I tried it about 10:30 am, and yep - it was fine - so we finally watched WALL E but not w/ our breakfast.

I keep thinking - I am paying so much money for THIS service???

Okay guys - explain this. What about my DSL? Is that part of the deal? I get U-Verse and it handles what - tv as well as DSL and phone all on one line? Or is it all separate?

[MrConfigT]

Originally Posted by anifani821

Okay guys - explain this. What about my DSL? Is that part of the deal? I get U-Verse and it handles what - tv as well as DSL and phone all on one line? Or is it all separate?

If you have AT&T DSL you will have to get rid of it to get AT&T u-verse. While it is basically the same thing, my understanding is that it is billed under a separate account.

I guess you could keep your DSL package you have and just order u-verse TV, but that is a litle counter intuitive and I think will cause trouble in the longer run.

Basically u-verse operates like this.

You *should* have more or less a direct shot at the vrad (Think about this as a big box)

AT&T ---fiber---- Big Box --- 4pair copper ---- House

Now, depending on how far you are from this box, and the age and quality of the cable, you could theoretically achieve speeds upwards of 100Mbps. For AT&T u-verse the minimum is 25Mbps for the HD package. I get 26Mbps due to my wires being almost 30 years old. Therefore the highest speed internet I would really want to get is 6Mbps, otherwise I'm paying for speed I can't get.

Now on to the DSL part. The u-verse 2wire gateway that you get will operate the signal. It has 16 (i think) DSL modems inside that auto-switch to maximize throughput. So your internet and tv are basically coming over DSL. So your internet will still behave like DSL, but you get 1Mbps to 1.5Mbps upload speeds (compare to 384Kbps - 512Kbps with TWC). This is huge if you work from home or game online. You are getting 3-4 times the upload speed while sending files through your vpn.