It's been several months since we moved our home from Comcast to AT&T Uverse. Aside from the phantom charges, pricing and lengthy outages, I really didn't have any issues with Comcast. I wanted to try Uverse because I'd never really tried another bband digital TV solution. My initial experience with Uverse is definitely a grin.
Even tonight, after AT&T Uverse needed to reboot before each NFL game, I was still pleased with the recovery and support experience. The support experience in particular is nice.
Two days after the unit was installed, the hard-drive was borked when the box failed in the middle of an upgrade. I suspect the unit lost power in the middle of a major upgrade and literally forgot where it was, what it was doing. A quick swap fixed everything. I'm sure that box was wiped and reinstalled somewhere else -- I don't really care. The point is that my wife explained to support that the box needed to be replaced before a sporting event the next day, and so a Uverse truck showed up at 6:30pm, a nice guy swapped the box, tested the remote box and disappeared quickly. That's the kind of TLC I like.
At a feature level, the AT&T Uverse IPTV STB is light years ahead of the crappy comcast Motorola DCT-series. The content is IPTV, not digital cable, which is better. But, the user experience is much better. The Uverse GUI, multiple tuners and local hardware mean that the overall user experience is modern, relatively feature-rich, and hardware is responsive to the remote IR commands. It makes Comcast feel appropriately last-century.
So far, I'm a fan. But, I'm worried about the outages I saw tonight -- they remind me of a common issue in all broadband services. What happens when everyone in your area are using the Internet AND watching TV at the same time? If you're using IPTV, where the TV signal and the Internet are connected to the same pipe, something is going to give. I'm worried about the Olympics, Election night, World Cup, Final Four, Oscar night... I'll be watching, tweeting, and sharing my experiences.
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