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AT&T U-Verse: whadya know about it?

Buttermaker

Buttermaker

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Does anyone have this digital cable, internet and phone combo? What can you tell me about it? I am considering it as an alternative to TWC.
 
I have internet and TV through U-Verse. I have not had a landline phone in years though.

I like U-Verse but it's not better with everything. As far as TV goes, I tend to think HD looks slightly better on TWC. Uverse is good but a little softer looking thatn TWC. However, wehn watching standard def TV, especially on an HDTV, Uverse looks infinitely better than TWC, so I prefer Uverse for that.

As far as Internet goes, download speeds seem pretty comparable but my upload speed with Uverse is about three times faster than I could ever get with TWC. The caveat on internet, however, is that I play a lot of games on Xbox live, like Call of Duty, where latency is an issue. My ping rates with TWC were really, really low, sometimes around 18 ms. Now with Uverse about the best I ever get is abou 81ms. That causes me to be slightly behind a lot of people I play against. Obviously not a big deal if you don't play games, but I thought I would throw it out there.

Finally, Uverse is more expensive than TWC. Regardless of their bundles, deals, whatever I have never been able to get Uverse cheaper than TWC, with our without a TWC contract. However, you can get close enough that I would rather just stick with Uverse. You can always call Uverse customer service, which is really easy to deal with, when your deal expires and they will sign you up for whatever is currently being promoted, without a contract.

I have also never had a service interruption with Uverse except when my dogs ripped a cable out of the box outside and a tech had to come out and figure out what happened. Not AT&T's fault, but they fixed it.
 
Thanks Raleigh. More expensive than TWC eh? Interesting, since the main reason I am considering switching is a substantial discount for the first year. Sounds like that discount completely evaporates in the second year.
 
I have U-verse and like it, but you are correct in that the sign-up incentive rate goes away. Also, don't expect bill consolidation. I still get three separate bills from AT&T, one for local phone service, one for TV and internet, and one for mobile phone service.
 
cant speak wrt time warner, but i switched to uverse from charter communications. I've got the 3 bundle and pay about 170$ for all the cable channels (including hbo, cinemax, showtime, and whatever other crappy movie channel they have and rent 2 cable boxes) landline phone, and fastest internet. I've been thrilled with the TV, never use the phone, and am somewhat disappointed with the internet speed. Charter internet "seemed" faster on the downloads. All 3 Charter bundle was costing me about 210$ per month when I had it. Started about 7 months ago so I havent yet had my contract end yet.
 
we have it in the triad. We have the fastest internet package, the second highest tv package on 4 HDTVs, and a landline and it is a little over $200 a month. I really like how much faster the internet is, more than twice the download speed and 5x the upload speed that time warner offers here. I also like having DVR access on all the TVs plus we finally have NFL network for this fall. With all the promos it is cheaper than TWC would be for the same thing, however when our year is up we will probably go back to time warner if they have launched the wide band internet and can get "new customer" promo again. Its nice that time warner finally has some competition in the triad so they can't get away with their pathetic offerings in terms of internet speed and channel line-ups any more.
 
Northstate Communications Plex service kills TWC if you can get it. They finally reached my neighborhood and there are many smiles in the tvcigar compound.
 
biggest downside when comparing was that with TWC you only HAD to have a cable box for HDTVs, not for std def TVs. With Uverse you will have to get a cable box for every TV you want to be able to watch at a cost of $7/mo per box.

So I used to rent 1 cable box from TWC for my HDTV and was able to watch any of my other 4 tvs whenever i wanted. With Uverse I picked 3 tvs to hook up and lost the ability to watch TV in two other rooms. :(
 
We switched from Comcast last week to ATT U. So far, so good. Save almost $40 per month with more channels and a six month 1/2 price (4$0 after the first 6 months). Also, w Comcast, we did not have the ability to watch premium channels on every TV or to use the DVR on any TV which is real nice.
 
TWC does have whole house DVR now, at least here in the Triangle.
 
I had a guy come to my door and try to sell uverse.

I pay $90 a month today for internet and hd cable tv, one dvr, two receivers.

He was offering internet, 4 receivers, whole house dvr, and same cable channels (generally) for $94. Catch was that it went up to about $140 after 6 months.

I declined. Honestly, I watch one tv 99% of the time and don't place any value on whole house dvr.
 
DO NOT DO IT!!!!

I tried to leave TWC but I was crawling back with my tail between my legs 3 months later. Horrible experience. There are a few lengthy threads on this but trust me, DO NOT DO IT!!!!

FWIW, their cost will climb up to what you can get TWC down to for the same services. I did get a nice $200 gift card when I signed up, but I would give the $200 back if I could erase the entire experience from my mind.
 
TARDAWG said:
DO NOT DO IT!!!!

I tried to leave TWC but I was crawling back with my tail between my legs 3 months later. Horrible experience. There are a few lengthy threads on this but trust me, DO NOT DO IT!!!!

FWIW, their cost will climb up to what you can get TWC down to for the same services. I did get a nice $200 gift card when I signed up, but I would give the $200 back if I could erase the entire experience from my mind.
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Details?

I got a $300 card for signing up with them. My experience with them has been great. Customer service has been top notch and the service call for the dog incident was easily scheduled and resolved quickly.

I am, however, still thinking about going back to TWC just for the cost issue. My Uverse just kicked back up again, so I either need to call and get the latest promotion or just switch back. My 12 gig internet plus U300? TV service (Most everything except HBO, Showtime and oddly enough, Palladia) on three HDTVs with whole house DVR runs about 149 a month, now that the discount has expired again. Last time I checked with TWC they would give me the exact same thing for 108 a month without a contract. I don't remember how much with a 2 year contract but it was less.

I do miss TWC internet as I died less in Call of Duty since I had a much better ping rate.
 
Our service went out last thursday when Time warner cut our at&t cable while burying new lines in our neighborhood and at&t had a tech out to our house within 3 hours of calling them who verified no problems with our equipment and got the line repair set up so that it was fixed the next day. I was very pleased with their customer service.
 
TWC is absolutely horrible.

I've heard horror stories about U-Verse.

Just get DirecTV and don't look back.
 
Ive heard lots of horror stories re: UVerse, mostly regarding bandwidth. Have heard of lots of people who cant watch an HD signal in two rooms, etc.

I have never had TWC though, so it may be better than that.
 
TheTwinAndreBen said:
Ive heard lots of horror stories re: UVerse, mostly regarding bandwidth. Have heard of lots of people who cant watch an HD signal in two rooms, etc.

I have never had TWC though, so it may be better than that.
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That was true when Uverse first launched I think. Now, it is based on how far you are from their box. If you're too far from the box, I think you're limited to 2 HD streams at once. (i.e. one thing in one room and one in another, or one on the DVR, etc.). However, I am technically "too far" from the box to have 4 HD streams, but I asked them to turn it on for me anyway, and I've never had any trouble with it. So, I can watch an HD channel and DVR up to three more at the same time.

I should also throw out there that I like the Uverse user interface on their boxes much more than the last TWC update that was put out. It is very user friendly and doesn't freeze like the TWC box I had does. The old TWC box would freeze if you were scrolling through the guide too quickly and you would have to wait for it to catch up.

I do like Uverse but it's not a panacea or anything. I have had Uverse and TWC and friends with DirecTV. They all have their pros and cons.
 
You are limited to only being able to watch/record 4 different channels at a time, but I have never been limited by that. Unfortunately its a case of picking the least bad for internet and tv in most places because almost all of them have something that sucks about them.
 
wake said:
You are limited to only being able to watch/record 4 different channels at a time, but I have never been limited by that. Unfortunately its a case of picking the least bad for internet and tv in most places because almost all of them have something that sucks about them.
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Agreed. Like I said, I am thinking about going back to TWC for the internet reason, although losing the high upload speed will suck.
 
I looked hard at U-verse when it first became available, but after some research determined that ultimately it wasn't any cheaper than Time Warner for my particular desired set-up. Further, it was lacking a few channels offered by TWC (e.g., AMC HD, MLB Network).

That said, I am grateful to U-Verse for lighting a fire under TWC's ass and motivating TWC to add a ton of new HD channels over the past few years.
 
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