[For screen shots demonstrating U-verse TV, check out the gallery.]
In terms of programming selection, AT&T U-verse is competitive with other television providers in my area for both high def and standard def content. I’ve had experience with DirecTV and Comcast, and I didn’t have to give up any of my favorite channels when I switched to U-verse. In my market the local channels are available on U-verse in both standard and high definition.
When I signed up, comparable U-verse programming packages were cheaper than either Comcast and DirecTV.
Four channels at a time
U-verse, like most modern digital TV services, requires a set top box for each TV. One quirk about U-verse is that, no matter how many set top boxes or TV’s you have, you can only tune four different channels at the same time.
That means that if you had five different TVs in your house being watched at the same time, at least two of them must be on the same channel as one of the other TVs. (Or, as an alternative, one of the TVs can watch a recorded program on the DVR, if the household has one.)
For HD customers, up to two of the four channel streams can be in HD. Some customers, depending on the distance from the U-verse equipment, may only be able to get one HD channel.
Although four channel streams for a household is plenty, the DVR needs to use those to record TV shows.Hencethe DVR can record up to four channels at the same time so long as no more than four channels are recorded or watched at once. If there are conflicts, the set top box will inform you and ask you what you would prefer to stop watching or recording.
Since I can watch or record up to two HD programs at the same time, there are times when my DVR is recording two shows at once in HD and I want to watch a third HD show on live TV. In that case, U-verse asks me to either cancel a recording or to choose a channel in standard def, rather than high-def, to watch.
Good picture quality
The most recent comparison I have with U-verse is with DirecTV. I was very satisfied with DirecTV’s high definition content, but I was disappointed with their standard definition picture quality. If it wasn’t in high def on DirecTV, I didn’t think it was worth watching.
I’ve put U-verse head-to-head with DirecTV on my home setup, and I’ve found that U-verse's picture quality for standard def (upconverted to HD) is much better than DirecTV's standard def. I assume that with the fiber optic backbone at AT&T’s disposal, it isn’t necessary to compress the TV signals as much as DirecTV does from its satellites.
For HD, I find U-verse has deeper blacks and more saturated colors than DirecTV, though both have very good picture quality. I’ve read some complaints that U-verse’s picture is too dark, but the content looks great on my home setup.
Total home DVR
Most U-verse packages include a DVR for no additional cost. If you watch TV and don’t have a DVR, you’re really missing out. The U-verse DVR has some special features, which AT&T markets as “Total Home DVR.”
With Total Home DVR, you can record programs from any TV in your home or from the Internet. You can then playback recorded programs on any TV in your home.
My U-verse DVR has a hard drive large enough to store approximately 120 hours of HD programming or more than 300 hours of SD programming. By default, the oldest recorded programs drop off to make room for new ones, though I’ve yet to come close to running out of room.
The DVR lets you pause and rewind live TV. Additionally you can set up a single recording for your favorite TV show, and the DVR will record every episode (either with or without reruns) of that show.
For recorded programs, you can skip (30 seconds at a time) or fast forward past commercials. I can get through an hour program in about 42 minutes. And for football it’s a lifesaver. I can wait an hour after a college football game starts and, with the DVR, start watching it from the beginning. By the time I skip commercials and halftime, I’m usually caught up to “live” programming before the game is over.
When possible, the DVR records a couple minutes before and after each program so that most of the time the ending is recorded even if the program runs long. You can also extend the recording to run further past the scheduled end time of the program in order to capture the possibility of programs running long due to overtime, etc.
It’s also possible to add and delete recordings from the Internet. That’s handy for when I’m working late and want to record a show I would otherwise miss before I got home.
You can also manage recorded programs and search for shows on the Internet. Although you can do that on the set top box as well, it’s actually much easier to do so on the Internet.
The U-verse DVR lacks a lot of features I used on my DirecTV HD DVR. For one thing, U-verse has no way of knowing which show I prefer to record if some of my series happen to overlap. It really stinks when a Seinfeld rerun that’s on 5 times a day preempts a recording of Chuck, for example. With my DirecTV DVR, I ranked all my shows from favorite to least favorite, and the DVR would use that to resolve conflicts should they ever arise.
It was also easier to manage recordings on DirecTV. If I want to delete 5 episodes, or an entire series, it was a cinch on DirecTV. With U-verse the easiest way I’ve found to do something similar is to forget about the set top box and use their web interface to do something similar.
Another feature I missed on my DirecTV DVR was setting up recordings by keyword. I could set up the DirecTV to record any program containing, for example, “Robert DeNiro” and it would, from that point on, record TV program in which Robert DeNiro appeared.
Weather
With Comcast I could get the local forecast on The Weather Channel every ten minutes. U-verse has its own “weather service” that allows you to view current and forecasted conditions as well as radar, satellite and a frequently-updated video feed of an Accuweather meteorologist giving a local weather report.
For severe weather alerts, U-verse will sound an alert and pop up on the TV screen a description of the severe weather condition. It’s pretty slick because it works even when I’m watching a program I recorded a week ago, and severe weather alerts don’t interfere with recordings.
As I mentioned in an earlier post, U-verse has been reliable (so far) in bad weather, and that, coupled with severe weather alerts in real-time, have been one of the features I like best about the television service.
The bottom line
Pluses
- Set top box has elegant and straightforward programming guide and menus
- Very good picture quality
- Competitive programming choices at the lowest cost
- Set and view recordings from any TV in the house
- Reliable in bad weather with severe weather alerts that work well
- Excellent web interface for managing recordings
- Interfaces with Harmony remotes and Slingbox
- No tuning delays when changing channels
- DVR has plenty of recording capacity
- On demand is instantly available
Minuses
- DVR has fewer recording options than DirecTV
- No way to prioritize potential recording conflicts
- IR receiver on set top box frequently misses commands from the remote
Saturday, January 30, 2010 at 12:52 PM 