AT&T Uverse

theDreamer

2[H]4U
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Oct 11, 2006
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Well, anyone who has read my TV tuner card thread knows I am getting Uverse. Though it seems for the time I am out of luck with the tuner card, no big deal. AT&T has a pretty solid DVR already, which is great, but I am wondering about a few other things.

~How many channels can I record at once while watching TV?
AT&T says two HD channels, but can I be watching HD channels? We have two televisions in our house so I am making sure we can all be watching what we want and recording if needed.
~Can the DVR have an external hard drive added for more storage?
~Can I offload my recorded shows some how? I know DVRs are pretty locked down, but this would be great.
~What else can anyone tell me about AT&T Uverse?

Thanks.
 
My dad used to work for AT&T and they used to force him to "volunteer" to promote Uverse and all.

Essentially, Uverse is a very flexible version of verizon FIOS where they start out giving you very little for not a very good price and give you a bit more the more you pay... Even now, they are still severely throttling down their network in hopes of getting more customers on the same network.

In response to your question, i only thought that you could watch ONE HD Set in the house but have upto 4 sets in the house watching. Also, i believe that you have ONE DVR that serves the rest of the house with DVR as well. I am not sure about the added storage, but to my knowledge there may be hacks to get more storage. I do not know about the offloading of your DVR programs, but knowing ATT it will either be very hard to do, or it will be in an encrypted format that may not be worth the time and effort.

If you want to have a DVR that gives you the capability to do the things you're suggesting i dont necessarily think that ATT UVerse is for you. This is a severely locked down version of IPTV and its really ATT just controlling the user's data usage and control of that data in order to maximize profits.
 
Ugh, that sucks. After spending a year with Comcast and having horrible service I just needed to jump ship to something. I know about the one DVR controls all recorded content, which I think is great. Downside is you are then limited to the storage on that one unit, hence why I was hoping to add an external drive.

My plan is to get an upper end internet connection, and just one step up for the television (U200 or something). If you can only watch one HD channel at a time that is not good, I will need to find out a solid answer about that. Two televisions in the houses and they are both usually on HD channels.
 
Uverse isnt really cheap and their fastest net is like 10mbit. Even though they advertise they have an 18mb package but ive never seen it. I have TW turbo and we only need basic cable so we pay like 45 a month for like a 20mbit cable package. Im pretty happy with TW turbo especially since i used to have ATT DSL and they sucked. My neighborhood is wired for Uverse and has been for like a year, and yet... they dont offer it to us but my friend in another neighborhood(same suburb) has Uverse and i gotta Admit the HD signal is pretty good. But their internet sucks and they pay ALOT for it. And im not too keen on the idea that your phone, internet, wifi, and TV are all controlled by one massive router which if it goes you lose everything.
 
Well, I am very particular, we are only using Uverse for internet and television. Phone will always be through a non-VOIP system (at home). So far I think I am only getting the 3mb (going to move to the 6 soon), and the only other option in our area is Comcast and AT& DSL. Currently have AT&T DSL and having no problems, but was hoping to get a better boost form Uverse, will have to see.

My only concern really is the television setup. Other services use QAM, would have loved that for interfacing with my HTPC, but am over that. The other thing is the HD recording and viewing at the same time, but will have to see how good our service in our area is.
 
AT&T U-Verse is a Microsoft Mediaroom product, so I wouldn't be surprised if the stored recordings were some flavor of WMV, DVR-MS, etc type of file.
 
AT&T U-Verse is a Microsoft Mediaroom product, so I wouldn't be surprised if the stored recordings were some flavor of WMV, DVR-MS, etc type of file.

Man, why would they use WMV thats got not so good compression ratios. id rather go with somethig like H.264.
 
Uverse isnt really cheap and their fastest net is like 10mbit. Even though they advertise they have an 18mb package but ive never seen it. I have TW turbo and we only need basic cable so we pay like 45 a month for like a 20mbit cable package. Im pretty happy with TW turbo especially since i used to have ATT DSL and they sucked. My neighborhood is wired for Uverse and has been for like a year, and yet... they dont offer it to us but my friend in another neighborhood(same suburb) has Uverse and i gotta Admit the HD signal is pretty good. But their internet sucks and they pay ALOT for it. And im not too keen on the idea that your phone, internet, wifi, and TV are all controlled by one massive router which if it goes you lose everything.

same thing with my naighborhood and uverse.. they came in and put all the cables in a little over a year ago.. and yet nothing.. all we get is lame arse 768/384 dsl.. honestly i hate comcast but SBC/ATT sucks and always will suck in my area.. and the rate their moving we will have fios in my crappy naighborhood before ATT decides to ever use the fiber optics lines they installed here..



also for the other 2 posts above mine.. your more likely to see mpeg2 then you will see WMV.. i dont think any of the companies with HD broadcasting use h264 only europe does..
 
In general, most of the STBs I've ever used do allow connecting an external drive for additional storage. However, everything on it is encrypted so no dumping off to a pc or anything.
 
In general, most of the STBs I've ever used do allow connecting an external drive for additional storage. However, everything on it is encrypted so no dumping off to a pc or anything.

Well, just adding more hard drive space would be better than none, will have to see what information I can find out. I did find a very old guide on how to upgrade the internal hard drive. Though it is a few years old and not sure AT&T uses the same STB.
 
Well, anyone who has read my TV tuner card thread knows I am getting Uverse. Though it seems for the time I am out of luck with the tuner card, no big deal. AT&T has a pretty solid DVR already, which is great, but I am wondering about a few other things.

~How many channels can I record at once while watching TV?
AT&T says two HD channels, but can I be watching HD channels? We have two televisions in our house so I am making sure we can all be watching what we want and recording if needed.
~Can the DVR have an external hard drive added for more storage?
~Can I offload my recorded shows some how? I know DVRs are pretty locked down, but this would be great.
~What else can anyone tell me about AT&T Uverse?

Thanks.
I think most areas are 2HD 2SD. Uverse only pushes down the channels are you watching or recording. What that means is that you can only have 2 HD streams being pushed over the wire at a time. If you're recording 1, you can only watch 1 other. If you're recording 2, you can't watch anything in HD that's not recorded on the DVR

I'm not sure about external storage

I don't believe there is a sanctioned method for offloading content, but that's par for the course for DVR

Some additional information:


  • Its basically super DSL that they pump data/voice/and TV over. I believe you get somewhere around 45 meg of bandwidth (that may have changed) that has to be split among all the services.
  • You can't get super high speed internet because the TV needs most of it, and I have heard of instances of high downloading degrading TV quality.
  • You'll have a central router which acts as a modem and feeds all the computers/DVR's in your house (kind of like how the 2wire units are now)
  • At some point, they have or will add the ability to watch any program recorded on any DVR on any TV in the house.
 
Thank you for the info undyingshadow, pretty much answers my concerns about recording/watching. Oh, they have added the one DVR - all STBs in one house, called Total Home, one of the reasons AT&T sounded so nice. Everything sounds alright, hopefully I will not run into many issues of recording/watching HD channels.
 
~How many channels can I record at once while watching TV?
AT&T says two HD channels, but can I be watching HD channels? We have two televisions in our house so I am making sure we can all be watching what we want and recording if needed.
~Can the DVR have an external hard drive added for more storage?
~Can I offload my recorded shows some how? I know DVRs are pretty locked down, but this would be great.
~What else can anyone tell me about AT&T Uverse?
To my knowledge you can only receive/record two HD and two SD streams at once. Meaning that if STB #1 is watching HBO HD, and STB #2 is watching Showtime HD that you will no available streams to record a show in HD.

I can test this out and verify its operation if you would like.

To my knowledge you can not add external storage to these units and AFAIK extracting the shows isn't possible like it was back in the day with TiVo.

If I could drop their internet service and keep the TV I would. VDSL inherently has higher pings than cable and my pings on my charter 16/2 service went from 8-14 to 45+. With most ranging in the 60-100ms range. We are a huge fan of the TV service, nice range of HD channels, ability to schedule recordings via a web interface. But I do want faster internet service. So my only option is to stick with the slower VDSL and have great tv or go back to shitty Charter and have awesome internet and shitty tv.

In our household, she could care less about the internet so that answers the question of if we are sticking with AT&T or not.

Any other questions, fire away.

I think most areas are 2HD 2SD. Uverse only pushes down the channels are you watching or recording. What that means is that you can only have 2 HD streams being pushed over the wire at a time. If you're recording 1, you can only watch 1 other. If you're recording 2, you can't watch anything in HD that's not recorded on the DVR

I'm not sure about external storage

I don't believe there is a sanctioned method for offloading content, but that's par for the course for DVR

Some additional information:


  • Its basically super DSL that they pump data/voice/and TV over. I believe you get somewhere around 45 meg of bandwidth (that may have changed) that has to be split among all the services.


  • Looking at my Broadband link summary I see:

    Connection Speed:
    • Incoming: 25216 kbps
    • Outgoing: 2048 kbps

    Which is no where close to 45meg of bandwidth. My speed tests (while recording 2 HD streams) average around 10,500 kbps down and 1500 kbps up. As well, with my DVR and STB off, my speedtests are the same.

    [*]You can't get super high speed internet because the TV needs most of it, and I have heard of instances of high downloading degrading TV quality.

    Again I've had no issues maxing my connection by downloading large (8-12GB) files while recording a single HD stream and watching another.

    [*]You'll have a central router which acts as a modem and feeds all the computers/DVR's in your house (kind of like how the 2wire units are now)
    This central router has a built in 4 port switch w/ wireless. I've had no problem daisy chaining one port off to a 16port switch.

    [*]At some point, they have or will add the ability to watch any program recorded on any DVR on any TV in the house.

We've had that ability since at least July 2008 here in St. Louis. Only downside is that your other STB's can't pause/rewind live TV only recorded programs. And the only other problem I have with using the secondary STB's is that you can't delete recorded shows with them.

As an example, lets say my main unit (the one with the hard drive in it) is in the living room. I watch 4 shows in my office and want to delete them. I have to walk into the living room, turn on the tv and delete them from that main unit. A bit of a pain in the ass.
 
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