UVerse or other HD programming

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Permalink Reply by Wesley on July 2, 2008 at 12:52pm

I've got a 45" plasma hooked to a HD-tuner/dvr from Comcast. Not very many HD channels. I also have an HD-DVD paperweight below that.

I recently ordered some HD (or at least better D) video cables for our Wii. Haven't hooked it up yet, but am looking forward to some slightly better clarity.

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Permalink Reply by Stephen Jeffers on July 2, 2008 at 12:59pm

I have the regular video cables for my Wii, I guess I don't play it enough to see any bad effects of the component cables.

Any surround sound or receiver?

What Wii games do you have? I have MarioKart and looking to get WiiFit.

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Permalink Reply by Tommy Wags on July 2, 2008 at 2:01pm

DirecTV has over 95 HD channels and includes the big ten network. Switch. The price and channels are worth it

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Permalink Reply by Stephen Jeffers on July 2, 2008 at 2:05pm

But DirecTV doesn't have high speed, plus my wife is all antsy about dish, hears all the horror stories about wind messing up the signal, etc. I'll take a look though, maybe put up some price comparisons.

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Permalink Reply by Tommy Wags on July 2, 2008 at 2:12pm

We kept our high speed with Comcast and got DirecTV for the TV. We were able to talk comcast into providing basic cable + high speed for the same price as we were paying before ($47 a month) and used a splitter to get one TV on basic cable. The rest of the TVs are on DirecTV, which we pay around $60 which is $10 less a month than we were paying for both at Comcast. Your wife is right, in bad storms it will knock out your signal. In the past 4 months, that has happened about 3 time for us. That is when we go up to the TV with basic cable to watch the news.

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Permalink Reply by William on July 2, 2008 at 2:45pm

I've got a 37" LCD DRP with Comcast HD-DVR.

I tried a dish several years ago, and was not happy when the weather interfered with the dish. I think my DVR is on the way out because it's been acting weird lately (not pausing live tv as if the DVR was 100% full, when it's not even 30% full). I need to reset it to see if that fixes the problem though, because that's what Comcast will have me do when I call them.

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Permalink Reply by Stephen Jeffers on July 2, 2008 at 2:57pm

You should check out

https://uverse1.att.com/un/OmsNavigateMenuAction.do

Also to check if its available in your aread

https://uverse1.att.com/un/storeOfferAction.do

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Permalink Reply by Michael Lombardi on July 3, 2008 at 10:13am

50" 720p Sammy DLP with a 7.1 Onkyo system and a Sony upconvert player ($40 last Black Friday which will hold me over til Blu-ray prices come down).

DirecTV has most of the channels I want in HD and more coming every 6 months or so.

I have basic cable and high speed through Comcast.

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Permalink Reply by Eric Thomas on July 3, 2008 at 10:36am

I love AT&T's offering.. unfortunately after ordering it their "crack" team of installers completely botched the job and caused my family to go back to Comcast. Four weeks of incompetent installer after incompetent installer blaming their failed setup on various things around my house... here's a couple quotes so that everyone can see what I was dealing with:

"Well, it appears that your TV is too old (5 yr old TV) and there are too many devices hooked to it (PS2, VCR, Super Nintendo)... this is causing the entire system to not work" -Durrrr Tech #1

"You have too many things using power in this room (3 computers, 2 printers, TV), I bet if you turn half of it off the system will work" -Durrrrr Tech #2

"I'm sure it will be up soon" -Durrr Tech #3, just after the first quarter of the Colt's game I invited a bunch of friends over to watch on my SUPER DUPER Uverse system

So yea... I would have loved to have their service, but the above problems couldn't be solved in 4 weeks worth of installer visits. And don't even get me started on what it takes to "cancel service", that's a whole 'nother page of a story. lol

Final verdict, if you luck into intelligent installers and have an optimum situation... AT&T's Uverse is awesome.

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Permalink Reply by Travis on July 4, 2008 at 12:40pm

A warning to all of you thinking about switching from Satellite to Cable for your HD programming. Comcast does NOT provide full HD programming. They are actively degrading the signal quality so that they can advertise MORE channels. Check out this article for more details and comparisons.
http://consumerist.com/tag/cable/?i=374090&t=comcast-degrades-h...

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Permalink Reply by William on July 4, 2008 at 4:41pm

I've had Comcast HD for several months now and all the HD channels come in just fine. One thing to note, FiOS is Fiber-optic, not available in nearly as many areas in which cable is, and fiber-optic is WAY faster so it's not really a fair comparison.

Also, those images, the one on the right...c'mon, that is not even close to the quality of HD. That's worse quality than SDTV and I have a hard time believing that any cable company would consider that acceptable HD quality. I'm guessing that is a paused frame, and paused frames can easily become distorted...after all, you're pausing and can easily land between frames.

As far as why Comcast's quality is "worse", well, they are trying to keep up with the competition by offering more channels. Someone in the chain of command has to decide if it's better to offer fewer HD channels with better quality, or more HD channels with slightly less quality. I only hear people complaining of how few HD channels Comcast has...well, they're responding and the trade off is getting slightly lesser quality.

Sure, FiOS or Dish may be able to provide both, for now, but cable doesn't go out when there is a stiff breeze like Dish does. And FiOS is guaranteed to go up in price once it becomes more widely available. Eventually FiOS will have bandwidth issues and have to start compressing signals just like Comcast is supposedly doing now. FiOS has limited bandwidth too.

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Permalink Reply by Nick on July 14, 2008 at 6:10pm

Ok so here is my input on Uverse. so far so good its got some awesome feature to go with it. such as their web remote which i do like. you can go online to set something up to drv if you have forgotten to. if your phone has the internet they have a moblie version of webremote so you dont even have to get to a computer. and you can rec 4 shows at once, (or 2 HD shows at a time i think it is) outside of those uverse has 40 HD channels i think it is right now. the house is ran on coax but once it gets out to there boxes everything is on fiber. as far as the internet goes it has wireless incase you want to use your laptop. unlike cable you dont share your bandwidth with anyone else outside of your house. overall i like it. i did have directv which was an awesome service but i saved a little money going to uverse. i will miss NFL sunday ticket so i will have to take my daughter out to go watch the Bengals games. If anyone does decide they want it let me know cuz i think they do a $50/$50 type referall deal.

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