Dropped the Dish!

[Deacon]

Well Dish Network decided that they wanted to migrate their HD channels to a western satelite. No problem for them, big problem for me. I can't access the western sat cause it is too low on the horizon and I have too many trees in the back yard (which is west of the house). I had a Dish tech come out and he couldn't resolve the problem. I had another tech come out a week later and his best suggestion was to move the dish from my roof to the yard. After I stopped laughing I dismissed his idea and sent him on his way.

So I call AT&T and after 2 weeks of waiting and a 4 hour install I now enjoy Uverse. And I must say that my initial feeling is one of happiness. THis system is much, much, much more flexible than Dish. The picture quality is much better even the HD. I have no idea what Dish was passing these days as HD but I immediatly noticed the Uverse HD was crisper. I had thought the pic quality was getting worse with Dish but I just assumed it was my TV showinig its age. Well now its back in full HD glory!

It acutally now makes me kinda mad that Dish was passing a subpar representation of HD and one of my concerns was that uverse would have the same quality of picture. With Dish I watched my local's in HD over the air and I could see the difference in the picture quality when watching games etc. Well now I have no worries cause the Uverse picture quality looks just as good as the OTA.

Ohh and did I mention I now have DVRs for all my sets.

I am glad Dish flaked out and made me have to switch. :happy-smileygiantred:

 

[Yesfan70]

I really, wish Uverse would hurry up and get here. It's bad enough I actually don't live in Chattanooga, but everywhere in my city has it but my neighborhood.

I just know that as soon as I start buying matrix switches, extenders, and the like to have "whole house DVR", that's when Uverse will be available.

 

[Towen7]

Welcome to the Uverse club.

If you order any more AT&T products, like a wireless STB, be sure to mention my promo code... TO5679.

 

[jamhead]

I'm thinking of switching from cable to uverse. How was the install Deacon? Clean?

 

[Deacon]

I would imagine the install is very similar to that of cable. The only real differnece is they have to hang an upgraded phone junction box on the outside of the house and a backup batterey somewhere in the house. I would consider it a clean install, no unexpected difficulty. The only glitch was that I had to have a single line run into the house for the basement setup because when I originally finished the basement I ran RG-59 for the Sat hookup but that was not sufficient for Uverse.

 

[Towen7]

I would imagine the install is very similar to that of cable.

It can be. The biggest difference is that the lines to the STBs all come together at the gateway (router)

Since the VDSL signal is on the telephone lines it terminates at the same spot on your house as the phone lines do. From there an a dedicated RG6 coax, or twisted telephone line goes to the gateway (router). There needs to be a dedicated line from the junction box to the gateway. If there is an existing coax line between the junction box and the gateway we may need to install a diplexer. We'll also make sure that all coax fittings are replaced with quality compression fittings. Once the gateway is served each STB needs to talk it. They can be connected via Ethernet or RG6. If RG6 cable is used then we need to ensure that any splitters and all fittings meet our specs.

 

[lulimet]

I wonder how Uverse compares to Fios.

 

[Towen7]

Uverse and FIOS are totally different products utitizing completely different platforms. Uverse is a 100% IPTV product while FIOS is essentially traditinal CATV with the fiber optic line terminating at the home instead of a node between the head-end and the house. There are some areas where Uverse utilizes fiber all the way to he home as well but it's still 100% IPTV.




Full disclosure... I am an AT&T employee but I do not represent them here.

 

[MatthewB]

When I was at Towens gtg I thought his Uverse looked horrible on some HD channels while sports looked incredible. I recall Towen explaining that during sports Uverse gives more bandwidth to the sports so other channels suffer from compression issues. (Towen please correct if I was misinformed). I hate sports so I'll keep directv. Deacon I think your poor HD with dish was based on your line of sight issues. As for me the Directv techs tell me my location has one of the highest signal strengths they have seen because of location and direcy line of sight with sat.

 

[Deacon]

When I was at Towens gtg I thought his Uverse looked horrible on some HD channels while sports looked incredible. I recall Towen explaining that during sports Uverse gives more bandwidth to the sports so other channels suffer from compression issues. (Towen please correct if I was misinformed). I hate sports so I'll keep directv. Deacon I think your poor HD with dish was based on your line of sight issues. As for me the Directv techs tell me my location has one of the highest signal strengths they have seen because of location and direcy line of sight with sat.

You are absolutely wrong on that Matt. With a digital signal you either get the picture or you don't. There is no increase in quality based on the strength of the signal. Once you pass the treshold which if I remember correctly with dish it was around 65% signal strength then you got a picture. Anything below the threshold and the picture would go out completely.

 

[Flint]

Actually, intermittent signal issues can cause the image and sound to become blocky and lagging without shutting off the entire image altogether. I see that all the time with marginal signal strength from satellite. The decoder will try to make a working video stream from the data coming in. If it can get the occassional iFrame and most of the change data, it will do its best to make that work and the results will be blocky, stuttering, and lagging with audio drop outs.

I was in Las Vegas two weeks ago and the DirecTV image was terrible with blocky scene changes and fast motion breaking the image while the audio stayed fine.

 

[Botch]

Actually, intermittent signal issues can cause the image and sound to become blocky and lagging without shutting off the entire image altogether. I see that all the time with marginal signal strength from satellite.

its been happening more and more on my cable, too. Funny how the human form almost always takes on a gory look for a split-second.

 

[garypf]

Thank you for all the information. I have DirecTV now with AT&T internet and home phone. I switched to U-verse phone service and internet and was planning to keep DirecTV in my bundle but AT&T made me an offer I couldn't refuse. I will be getting the entire Uverse package. Getting the U450 package with the internet and phone service. I'll probably cut nearly $75-100 from my monthly combined TV-internet-phone bill.