AT&T - UVerse Service Review

Bottom-Line: AT&T's U-Verse Service is a solid winner in my book and well worth the costs. 

No longer willing to put up with the Dish, we recently had AT&T U-Verse installed (we opted for the HD digital cable service and broadband Internet) and so far the results are spectacular!  

Installation

Free Installation of the U-Verse Service took about three hours to complete (not unheard of) and involved the running of coax cable, installation and setup of the router/modem, and finally the installation/turn-up of the individual cable receivers including a DVR.  Because we watch HBO and Showtime throughout the year we opted for the U450 cable service, which delivers some 450 channels including over 100 HD channels.  And I decided to go with the 6Mbps Internet service. 

The fairly large Residential Gateway (RG) is where the U-Verse Service all comes together via a coax cable.  From the RG the cable and Internet signals are dispersed via (4) wired RJ-45 ports, and or wireless-G.  The RG also hands out IP addresses to computers and other devices via Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol (DHCP), and it is equipped with a robust Firewall.  I had the install tech place our RG inside the entertainment center where it could not be seen, but still do its thing. 

The small, silver, Cisco provided Total Home DVR offers up to 233 hours of SD, or 65 hours of HD programming storage in a surprisingly stylish package.  Only one DVR is offered per installation; the rest of the television receivers are non-DVR.   But of course you can playback recorded programs from the DVR, but you CANNOT initiate recording from them, or pause live television; we found this out the hard way.  According to AT&T customer support that feather is forth-coming. 

My Viewpoint

I am very impressed by the U-Verse Service, so far anyway.  The picture and sound quality are vastly superior to what I was used to with Dish. I am seeing a whole new side of my HDTV! The sheer breath of channels can be quite overwhelming, and I have a plethora of On-Demand programming (paid and free), I have yet to explore.  The U450 package comes complete with all of the premium movie channels in SD and HD.

Each of the television receivers are connected via coax cable, but have component audio and video out as well and HDMI out, so each television in your home can display full 1080p HD, or SD. 

The audio and picture quality, 6Mbps broadband Internet access upload & download, channel selection, and overall service features and functionality, makes AT&T's U-Verse Service a solid winner in my book and well worth the costs.