ATT Uverse vs Time Warner? (movies, live, pricing)

[texasboi]

Well I sprung for TW bc they were cheaper at the time, internet is great, but after a week of cable tv usage, my box is out of commission and stuck in this boot stage for 4 days, have an appointment for tomorrow but so far cable tv a huge disappointment...Internet is still good

[brokeshoelace]

First house, Time Warner, terrible signal, terrible tech support, switched to ATT Uverse, intall a bummer, took them three trips. After install, good quality, but pricey. Moved to other side of Round Rock, no Uverse avaliable, back to Time Warner, terrible signal, boxes would go out on a regular basis, and replacements were always the older models. Prices went up at regular intervals, and no "dealing". Sales folks said they didn't know what increases were for, but there were no better deals avaliable, so see ya later... Finally switched to Dish network, TV is great, but internet ATT dsl kinda slow. Price less than half of what TW ended up at.

[sloppymeg]

Used TW in our rental house here. Internet signal was spotty and modem was a nightmare. Working from home was a laugh. I can't tell you how many web meetings I had to start, restart, and finally abandon.

TW cable box continued resetting, sometimes being stuck all day long.

Their techs were kind and courteous, but I got tired of seeing them. We had TWC for August 2011 to February 2012, and the techs were out AT LEAST once a month. We went through about 3 modems, and none were better than the previous. Very frustrating.

Then we bought the house we're in now, and had AT&T set up service since U-Verse is available here. I just received the first bill, which was painful, but I have had ZERO issues so far. ZERO.

I can talk on my phone AND use the internet at the same time. None of my web meetings are interrupted by dropped service.

TW has called every week since we canceled service asking why we left. I give the same answer every time, but I guess they're hoping I'll change my reasoning?!?!?!

[ghost_whistler]

Originally Posted by bld44

Uverse will be affected by neighborhood usage as well in a lot of cases (after all, you are sharing all of the bandwidth coming into the neighborhood node).

In my experience the compression that uverse uses is very high, resulting in substantially worse picture quality than TW.

Uverse uses H.264 mpeg4 architecture for compression...same as blue ray. Thus producing a high quality image. Make sure you are using Ethernet on HR. If you plan to tie knots around your home power with it ... make sure it's shielded twisted pair. Also, remove any RF emitting devices that may be near the RG and speaking of RG...keep it cool as well, don't set underneath dvd players, xboxs or whatever else. It's also a good idea to turn off the three other super sized hdtv's while playing warcraft or whatever. Those large screens eat up the HPNA signal.

[Gorfml]

Originally Posted by ghost_whistler

It's also a good idea to turn off the three other super sized hdtv's while playing warcraft or whatever. Those large screens eat up the HPNA signal.

deal breaker...

[wylkell]

Originally Posted by ghost_whistler

Uverse uses H.264 mpeg4 architecture for compression...same as blue ray. Thus producing a high quality image. Make sure you are using Ethernet on HR. If you plan to tie knots around your home power with it ... make sure it's shielded twisted pair. Also, remove any RF emitting devices that may be near the RG and speaking of RG...keep it cool as well, don't set underneath dvd players, xboxs or whatever else. It's also a good idea to turn off the three other super sized hdtv's while playing warcraft or whatever. Those large screens eat up the HPNA signal.

I agree on some of these points, but not all. HPNA speed/rate shouldn't be affected by having your TV's on, and your PC isn't going to be plugged into HPNA anyways. It's for the receivers only, when ethernet isn't in the room. Nothing about your TV service is going to affect your warcraft experience (maybe it'll affect bit torrent in very specific cases). The biggest reason to tell folks not to use HPNA (ethernet over coax) has more to do with everyone having 30 year old coax that is poorly terminated. That's also the reason you'll see the U-Verse tech cut off the old terminators on the coax cables before he even tests the cables. That said, a lot of your experience can be end-user induced (like stacking your receiver with other heat bearing devices)

And for the comments about U-Verse load at the neighborhood level, that's not really relevant. The neighborhood is going to be terminated into a VRAD and from there it goes fiber all of the way to the AT&T networks. Those pipes are much larger then you'd think, as they are feeding down every channel AT&T sells, as well as your internet. You aren't going to see slow downs during primetime with uverse as it's copper from the VRAD to your house. Everything really comes down to the copper going into your house (in terms of any limitations you'll hit).

It's also worth noting that U-Verse is VDSL whereas AT&T internet (non-Uverse internet) is ADSL. The latter is older, slower, and can go longer over copper, so they are sorta two different products. Just cause you have AT&T internet today, doesn't mean you'll be able to order U-Verse.

All of that said, in my experience, TW rarely beats AT&T at the service level (not talking about customer service, you're mileage will vary a lot with either), both in features or in video quality. It's more at the level of the satellite services (minus the 2 year contract), but I think it wins in the feature department. Since it's IP based, it's able to do more advanced features quicker then TW.

I've had both and if i couldn't get U-verse at my house, i'd probably get dish or directv.

[Austin97]

Originally Posted by wylkell

I've had both and if i couldn't get U-verse at my house, i'd probably get dish or directv.

directv has better picture quality than uverse for any fast panning like sports or concerts with a lot of lights or confetti

[tfresca]

Anybody been given any warnings about internet usage from AT&T if they have Uverse? I'm streaming heavy and worried about getting hit by suddenlink.

[Silkroad]

I moved last week, 78759 to 78757. Uverse Internet at old address worked great. At new address, only get signal 10p until 10a, but sparse-to-nothing during the day. They've tried to fix it three times thus far, without success. I work from home, or at least I did until I moved. Any idea what could be causing this? Seems like signal drop-off coincides with work day getting started in my neighborhood. Is that possible? Or could somebody have tapped into my line, so that signal is routed to another location during work hours?

[df175]

One significant consideration with Uverse is the quality of the phone lines in your residence. Uverse isn't available in many areas of Central Austin even if there is a Uverse box on the same block, especially in apartment buildings. The wiring in the buildings is just too old, and owners have no incentive to upgrade it. ATT won't pay for upgrades either.