Since April, we've had our setup of Roku, Over-the-Air (OTA) HDTV Antenna, and DISH, specifically the DISH America package. As the new season of "Mad Men" hit, the long standing DISH and AMC feud heated up, which originally had to do with a series of HD channels that were once owned by Cablevision and now AMC, that DISH bailed out on and dropped the channels. So, we lost AMC (we were on the DISH 200+ package before this happened) and it remains off of DISH. DISH does quite the number on the consumer when it comes to channel choices. We only wanted a few channels and those were almost all on the high-end packages. (See our prior post on the DISH and OTA stuff.) Our standalone Internet service has been provided by Comcast at over $70/mo., so Jennifer got one of these Uverse emails and after the endless barrage of promotional flyers in the mail, the numbers worked.
In year one, we're going to be paying exactly what we were paying with Comcast and DISH combined for their services, while we end up with three receivers including a DVR and nearly 400 channels vs. the "55" that we were paying for with DISH. In year two, it'll cost about $28 more per month, but that doesn't include the fact that we were spending $15-20 a month buying TV shows through Amazon on-demand that we couldn't get because DISH dumped channels that we liked, and it also doesn't include pending rate increases with DISH that are to begin in February. Besides the fact, if AMC came back to DISH, we'd have to upgrade our programming package and pay even more with them.
Now, let me get into the whole AT&T Uverse setup and review.
The AT&T Uverse product is really interesting and technically very cool. We signed up for service on Monday and had the install scheduled for Tuesday. About two hours after ordering, I received an email stating that they would be unable to install until Wednesday. That's not bad considering the delays that I had read about on so many other places about Uverse. On Tuesday afternoon, the outside prep installer was working on tuning up the lines coming to our home, which includes the telecom box on the side of the house and if you're in a residential neighborhood, you'll have a green stick that is vertically out of the ground. I talked to the technician for a few minutes and asked him whether we'd have to have a paired connection.
How it works with Uverse is that you can only be a certain distance from the Uverse hub that AT&T has installed to service a particular area. If you're beyond that, which is generally 3000 ft., you have to get a 2 pair setup. All that essentially means is that they're combining two lines to get enough strength for your signal to get Uverse. Our technician clocked our incoming speed at 135mpbs! Unfortunately, we're throttled down and won't get anything close to that, but it shows that we have a truly high speed connection coming into the house.
Our appointment was scheduled between 9 and 11 in the morning and the installer showed up at 9:30 to begin the work. We talked about various setups, connection points, cabling, etc. On our hardwired devices, he would be installing Cat5 Ethernet cables to connect the Uverse throughout the house. We opted to get two wireless receivers for television in two of the rooms. One of the really nice things is that you can move the receivers around and put them on any television within range of the wireless router. The third unit, which is the DVR that they include with your subscription is hardwired with the Cat5 cable. I also had the installer add an access point in another room so that I could connect our Ooma VOIP system directly there and it also created the hub for all of the AT&T communication devices.
Here's what you'll get in the install:
AT&T Wireless Gateway (http://www.att.com/u-verse/explore/residential-gateway.jsp)
AT&T Wireless Hub Device
AT&T Power Supply and Battery
AT&T Receivers
AT&T iNid (if necessary)
Installation of wiring: Request Cat5 instead of coaxial if existing lines aren't being used.
Package we opted for:
U-300 with HD, HBO, 3 receivers (2 wireless, 1 wired DVR)
Uverse Max Internet (12mbps)
Promotions:
$36 discount on U-300 for 12 months
Free HBO for 3 months
$10 discount on Internet for 12 months
The wireless gateway is a wireless router, plain and simple. If you have a router currently, you're going to use this instead. If you have any trouble with weak signals (this is a Wireless G Router), then you can stack another wireless router on here for another level or area of your house, which we're lucky to not have to do, but it's an easy workaround if needed. You'll see a box with the AT&T logo on the front and this is the power supply and battery backup. In case of your electricity going out, this supplies battery power to your Uverse for three hours.
Since we needed a 2 pair setup, AT&T had to install an iNID on the house. The iNID stands for Intelligent Network Interface Device and it is mounted on your house next to or above you existing telecom box from the phone company. The device has coaxial and Ethernet connection ports to hook up your home and it essentially acts as your modem, just mounted to the side of your house.
The installation is generally targeted at taking four hours long and can vary based on many scenarios. In our case, we were using fresh wiring on everything and that made the install smooth with regard to the inside of the house. Problems can arise for people with Uverse using their existing wiring and that all depends on the age and quality of what is already there.
Our installer ran one Cat5 up the house, through our attic, and back down in our bedroom to hardwire the DVR unit. As I mentioned before, the other two units are wireless, and the only other Cat5 install was for the Ooma device and AT&T Gateway. We've seen OK installers, good ones, decent ones, but I can say with certainty that our installer was excellent. Having wired up the house for the OTA, I can say that he did a really great job and even took the time to match up the cabling with what I had installed, so that we wouldn't have wires in entirely different places, holes in other places, etc.
The installation ended around 2:20 in the afternoon, so just shy of five hours. It would have been completed in about two and a half hours, but our inside technician was dealing with an outside technician as there were issues with the connection from the Uverse unit down the road to our house. The outside technician essentially had to find where there was a small patch and get that fixed, otherwise, we'd be running off only one of our lines, not the two pair setup, and would have a major decrease in quality of Uverse.
Once all of this was taken care of, we were off and running! We chose the 12mbps speed for the Internet and it's been testing at 12-13, so as advertised. With Comcast, we were paying for the 20mbps, but were mired time and time again around 5. So, on the internet side, we're looking good and the wireless connections are high throughout our house.
I've not gone through enough of the Uverse TV to go see all of the features right now, but I can make some observations about the service. First of all, it has the best on-screen menu system that we've ever had. The boxes are small and quiet. We had a DISH DVR that would sound like a freight train at times. AT&T has remote controls that includes backlighting and the buttons are soft and comfortable. Very impressive. As for the picture quality, the compression is less than on DISH's HD and there appears to be absolutely no difference between the wired and wireless units. So, you'll get an HD picture that is better than DISH or Comcast, but is absolutely no match for OTA. We put on "The Office" on Uverse and then switched over to our OTA transmission and to be honest, it isn't even close. From the sharpness to the vivid colors, the old fashioned over the air antenna blows any of the services out of the water. You'll also be watching true live television and the transmitted signals to the services providers are a few second behind real-time. We're still wired with OTA on these sets and intend to still use them plenty along with Roku. Now we have hundreds of television channels and will barely watch any of them, but to be at the same price point as we are now to get the channels that we actually want, that works!
There is a good number of on-demand programming and I'd say that my biggest complaint is that AT&T (just like all the others) charge an extra $10 for HD programming, which is a joke, plain and simple. This about amounts to the dealer fee that car dealers charge consumers. Just another fee with no cost associated with it, just profit.
Overall, from the ordering to install, it was a very impressive experience, which has been about the exact opposite of our past times with AT&T. I think that AT&T has everyone beat in the value for your money with their service. Currently, Uverse is available in about 30 million homes and they're not going to be expanding for the foreseeable future as AT&T tries to get as many homes in that total that they can get. I was also told that by the end of the year, there should be an expansion of up to six wireless receivers from the maximum of two that there is allowed today.
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