Suprised New U-verse Subscriber

[SnowBeer]

I had some trees grow and get in the way of my directv dish recently.  At the same time I got a new roof and time warner jacked their internet fees for the 15th time.  I was paying over $170 a month for internet plus TV.  With no dish on the roof and a tree in the way, I looked for new options.

U-verse seemed like the obvious choice, but I would say 90% of reviews are just horrible for the service.  "The picture quality is bad", "the guide is bad", it crashes often, "the wireless box doesn't work"... I decided I'd give it a go anyway since I could always cancel within 30 days.

The installer was 20x more knowledgable than a directv installer.  He finished in 2.5 hours.  I had prerun a few cat5e lines to help him out, which he terminated and tested.  I have two boxes on cat5e lines, and one upstairs on wireless.  I also use my own wireless-N router going into the gateway for smartphone/ipad/ps3/appletv/macbook/imac traffic. The DVR is one of the newer larger ones that is black.

It's been a couple weeks now.  I must say I am quite impressed, and I consider myself somewhat of a audio and videophile.  I'm watching on a 50" pioneer Kuro plasma running through a pioneer reciever for surround sound.

The picture quality for non sports is completely adequate, not any different than directv.  For some sports, on some channels, at some times, it is slightly degraded over directv, but not enough to bother me.  Things like monday night football look perfect to me.  Some games on the local channels in HD don't look that great.

The guide and interface are amazing compared to directv.  The responsiveness is way better than my directv DVR boxes.  The on demand content and whole-home DVR features work perfectly.  I have had zero system or box crashes, zero pixelation.  I did have a few audio drop outs on surround sound when I had an older DVR box (the grey one), but they brought me a newer one for another reason and they are gone now.

The amount of HD channels is crazy compared to directv.  I didn't even know some of these came in HD. I do miss the NHL network but so far this year that isn't a big deal.

I wanted to at least post one positive review.  So far I'm very happy with uverse.

[texasguy37 ACE - Expert]

Good review.  This is the reason that I always tell people to try the service and make up their own mind based on their own experience instead of basing their opinion of U-verse on what strangers are posting on the internet.  

I also read the negative comments about U-verse before I had the service installed.  I was prepared not to like the service and thought I might end up keeping Dish Network.  I too was pleasantly surprised.

[dhascall ACE - Master]

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SnowBeer wrote:

I had some trees grow and get in the way of my directv dish recently.  At the same time I got a new roof and time warner jacked their internet fees for the 15th time.  I was paying over $170 a month for internet plus TV.  With no dish on the roof and a tree in the way, I looked for new options.

U-verse seemed like the obvious choice, but I would say 90% of reviews are just horrible for the service.  "The picture quality is bad", "the guide is bad", it crashes often, "the wireless box doesn't work"... I decided I'd give it a go anyway since I could always cancel within 30 days.

The installer was 20x more knowledgable than a directv installer.  He finished in 2.5 hours.  I had prerun a few cat5e lines to help him out, which he terminated and tested.  I have two boxes on cat5e lines, and one upstairs on wireless.  I also use my own wireless-N router going into the gateway for smartphone/ipad/ps3/appletv/macbook/imac traffic. The DVR is one of the newer larger ones that is black.

It's been a couple weeks now.  I must say I am quite impressed, and I consider myself somewhat of a audio and videophile.  I'm watching on a 50" pioneer Kuro plasma running through a pioneer reciever for surround sound.

The picture quality for non sports is completely adequate, not any different than directv.  For some sports, on some channels, at some times, it is slightly degraded over directv, but not enough to bother me.  Things like monday night football look perfect to me.  Some games on the local channels in HD don't look that great.

The guide and interface are amazing compared to directv.  The responsiveness is way better than my directv DVR boxes.  The on demand content and whole-home DVR features work perfectly.  I have had zero system or box crashes, zero pixelation.  I did have a few audio drop outs on surround sound when I had an older DVR box (the grey one), but they brought me a newer one for another reason and they are gone now.

The amount of HD channels is crazy compared to directv.  I didn't even know some of these came in HD. I do miss the NHL network but so far this year that isn't a big deal.

I wanted to at least post one positive review.  So far I'm very happy with uverse.

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Cool!  Welcome! Don't be a stranger on the forums.

One of the things you mentioned in the first few sentences was "90% horrible reviews." That gave me some pause.  Really?  90%?  Where did you get that impression and /. or number?  Just curious.  Two years ago, U-Verse and Verizon FiOS were tied at the top of a  Consumer Reports review on "cable" TV.  I really like U-Verse over my former provider Comcast and have not looked back.  Does that mean that U-Verse is perfect?  Nope but I love it.

At any rate, glad that you like it so far and welcome again!

[oufanindallas]

As a UVerse customer for 4 years in 3 different locations it's nice to see positive reviews.  I've enjoyed my service much more than Direct/Dish and TWC.  When I have the rare issue I've always gotten rapid and satisfactory results.

[SnowBeer]

I swagged 90% based on my research, basically googling and reading for a couple nights. Perhaps it was because many of my queries were "directv vs uverse". For the time I spent I probably only found 2 positive reviews and the rest were listing bad experiences.

[americangame ACE - Guru]

To be fair the people who love thier service don't usually go online and post messages about how great their service is.

[mibrnsurg ACE - Master]

The difference you noticed in sports broadcasts breaks out like this:  all Fox, Disney/ABC/ESPN and some others are 720p; all NBC and CBS and others are 1080i.

Generally the 720p Networks will look better on sports, 1080i will look worse due to the fact they need 10-20% more bandwidth to look as good as 720p under Uverse H.264 compression.

http://www.avsforum.com/t/164671/the-official-avs-hdtv-programming-synopsis-updated-3-28-12

Chris

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Please NO SD stretch-o-vision or 480 SD HD Channels
Need Help? 1-800-288-2020, After he gets acct info, press # a bunch of times, get a menu from Mr. Voice recognition
Your Results May Vary, In My Humble Opinion
I Call It Like I See It, Simply a U-verse user, nothing more

[dhascall ACE - Master]

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americangame wrote:

To be fair the people who love thier service don't usually go online and post messages about how great their service is.

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Mostly right but I have heard more good stuff about U-Verse from folks, outside of this forum, than bad.  First was word of mouth from friends and neighbors, then the Consumer Reports article in 2009, then last year in a Customer Service course @ work, one exercise had us attendees list bad companies, okay companies and great companies.  U-Verse was in the top three of great companies (ironically, AT&T as a whole was listed in the bad area, lol) and finally a 2010 or so, Indy Star article where Comcast "wasn't too concerned" about losing 10-30 subscribers per week to U-Verse.  The article interviewed UV subscribers and they seemed very positive.