Opinions on AT&T U-verse?

[kenjones]

I have had DirecTV since 1994. Love the picture quality, hate the customer service. I wanted to upgrade to Whole Home DVR, but DirecTV won't give me a decent deal on the upgrade. My current two year contract doesn't end until January 11, 2011, so maybe I need to wait until after then. When we upgraded to HD two years ago, DirecTV promised me all kinds of free stuff to sign a new two year contract and then they went ahead and charged for them. I did eventually get my money back but it took several phone calls and a lot of my time. This time around I asked DirecTV to get their proposed Whole Home DVR deal in writing and they refused. They said they don't do written quotes.

Has anybody done a direct comparison between DirecTV and U-verse? I saw U-verse at a friend's house a couple of years ago when it first came out and was very underwhelmed. The picture quality wasn't nearly as good as DirecTV.

Our current ISP is Comcast. I was thinking about switching that too. I would then bundle phone, wireless, internet, and TV together and hopefully get a good deal from AT&T.

[MCChris]

Has anybody done a direct comparison between DirecTV and U-verse? I saw U-verse at a friend's house a couple of years ago when it first came out and was very underwhelmed. The picture quality wasn't nearly as good as DirecTV.

Never done a direct comparison between those providers but the U-verse picture quality is a noticeable step down from what I previously had, which was Comcast. Switching was a no-brainer for me, though, as I need boxes and DVR throughout the house and AT&T was a better value for that by a longshot.

[SteveB]

can't tell you much about Uverse TV as I still use Comcast because Uverse isn't compatible with my TIVO boxes. I've been pretty happy with UVerse internet. Customer support has been better from ATT than Comcast was, and once we fixed one bad jack its been rock solid, unlike my Comcast connection which was horrid. For raw speed though, its hard to beat cable on a good day. Download speeds with the high end Uverse internet packages are pretty good, but if you do alot of uploading I think cable wins.

[BadgerDave]

If you saw the rat's nest of cabling that the ATT installer left behind at my new house you would be sickened. Outlets hanging from the wall, those tiny phone wires stressed across sharp outlet boxes, no attempt at all to avoid masses of excess cable runs, etc.

One of the first things I did was to cancel the U-Verse and have DirecTV installed. Yes I have weather interference during severe storms (maybe a half dozen times a year) but otherwise, the picture is superior to Comcast or ATT and, IMO, the programming choices are better.

We're running two DVRs and a total of eight boxes (don't ask) with the whole house system. It works beautifully.