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AT&T - UVerse Service
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LauraBelle's Review
Worth the Wait
married to a phone man, daily computer user, Entertainment Writer, mother of 2
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AUG
31
2008
AT&T - UVerse Service —
I've been waiting to get AT&T's newest bundle, U-verse, since they first came out with it towards the beginning of the year. Before I go any further with this review, I will be honest and mention that my husband is an employee for U-verse and is in fact in management. Yet stating that, I also feel I can be honest about my opinions of the product and the service.U-verse combines three services, phone, cable TV, and internet, not only just in one bundle, but also all feeding off the phone line and off of one wireless router connected to your computer. Because of this, it allows everything to inter-connect. To be honest, though, our cable services and satellite services already have this capability. However, it seems that U-verse seems to be utilizing it all in a better way.
My only hangup with getting U-verse so far was getting people out here to do the work, and again, my husband is in management there. There was a problem with our line that they detected originally, so we had to wait for someone to come out and repair it. We then had to wait to be scheduled again. It took a few weeks altogether to get through this process, and I'm being told it's the paperwork that was holding it up. It was finally ready to be installed, but on that day, I was told by the installer that my DSL hadn't been cut yet and that could take a few hours. After that was cut, and I was held up in my work, they never came back. Luckily, my husband knew who to call for answers. It turns out to again by a paperwork wait, it was written up wrong, and we had to wait for that to go through again. I was told maybe the day after that, but also possibly not until the following week, but they restored my DSL while I waited.
Two days later early in the morning at 7:00 AM, I lost my DSL again without warning. After some phone calls, it was confirmed that they had indeed shut me off in preparation for the install. This sent me to scheduling, and the earliest I could get in would be 24 hours later, the following afternoon. My DSL had to remain off all that time, but luckily I was picking up a very weak signal on my wifi that went in and out. It was frustrating to work under that, but was all I had. It just seemed to be not a good system, cutting people off completely, THEN scheduling them.
Once the installer showed up, he was very knowledgeable and moved around setting it all up very quickly. While he reran the line through our house and set up the cable and internet, another worker joined him, working on the line outside, making sure we were getting the strongest signal possible. They worked as quickly as they could and seemed to be efficient, with it taking four hours start to finish.
Finally having it set up and able to use it now, it's everything I was hoping for. You can pick and choose around different parts of your bundle. While our phone service we chose to keep the same, we upped the service of the internet, getting the highest speed available, but we didn't have to choose that and could have gone lower. My downloading seems to take place with lightning speed.
The crowning glory, though, is the cable service. It is definitely a step up from DirecTV. While I had TiVo before, I still have a DVR, and while I could only record two channels at a time before, I can now do four, however it depends on if the other two receivers on the other TVs in the house are in use, as I can only have four different stations going at one time throughout. That's okay, as normally when I'm recording multiple TV shows it's during prime time and only one other TV is in use at that time. So that gives me three during prime time which is usually the most that I need. Following different shows and writing about them, I've had to pick and choose before, not being able to follow all that I needed or wanted to and this will definitely help. Coming in October will be the technology to have the other receivers in the house be able to watch what I have recorded on the DVR.
While with DirecTV the actual guide and channels appeared differently whether you were using a standard receiver or the TiVo, with U-verse it appears the same no matter which you are using. While I never found the guide and service hard to follow before, it seems with U-verse it is just that much more user friendly to move about pages and services. Because it connects with your phone service and internet which with AT&T means Yahoo, you get Yellow Pages on your TV, weather from your home page, and Yahoo games (JT's Blocks, Solitaire, Sudoku, Chess, and Mahjong). It's kind of nice to be ble to play a simple game here and there without having to go through a game system.
The crowning glory for me is the Video on Demand. While we had this service through Comcast cable before we had DirecTV it's so much better here. Before it was just a bunch of television shows I didn't care to watch, many that didn't even appear on regular TV, along with pay-per-view and a few movies from the premium movie channels. Gone with U-verse are the shows that I've never heard of before, and instead we have all the content from every premium channel on demand. All the Showtime series have the current episodes available to be watched at any time with no need to record. The specials appear the same way. And from what it looks like now, every movie that appears on this channels that month is available to watch whenever you want.
Although he's the employee here, my husband usually isn't impressed with hi-tech gadgets or services. However, after all these years of having various premium channels, be it HBO, Showtime, Starz, etc., he's thrilled to not have to be constrained to just those handful of movies on every night. He found Hollywood Knights showing on video on demand on Fix and Slapshot on RetroTV and he was hooked. Basically, we're all hooked in some way with this U-verse service. Had it not been for the difficulties getting to the installation point, they'd be getting four stars here, but that still bothers me, even though my U-verse was well worth the wait.
NOTE: the reviewer indicated that they are related to AT&T - UVerse Service
Last edited on Dec 24, 2009
AT&T - UVerse Service is recommended by LauraBelle
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