U-verse for me so far

Robare

Well, we switched over from Time Warner a few weeks ago. We went with U-200, Elite internet, and the u-verse phone. We've had 3 different installers/techs come over to install/fix. The first installer wasn't very good. He was in a hurry and was upset with his boss because he was given a late install and had to be somewhere. He didn't do a lot of stuff he should have. The second installer was much better, he tried to fix our issues we were having, by properly grounding the lines and removing the software on my computer the first tech put on my pc. But soon after he left we were still having issues.

Issues we were having - Screens on all TV's would black out, and "pixilate" on all channels. Phone was garbaly. Internet would disconnect often. And they couldn't seem to connect the phone properly with our security system. Now I understand that they do not guarantee the phone system to work with security systems so I was able to accept that. Our security guy came out and fixed it in a couple minutes and said he did exactly what he told the first guy to do. But I still understand that it it was the risk and price I was willing to take.

After the second tech, our phone issues were resolved within reason. I had fewer disconnects after moving my PC up on my desk and off the floor. I still need to move around the receiver to get to a Sweet spot. I could go with a hard wire to make this less of an issue, but I'm fine with how it is now mostly. Compared to my old DSL which was about 1.5 - 3 Mbps the 6 Mbps I have now seems only slightly faster on normal web browsing. I haven't done anything beyond that to really compare. We are undecided if we like the internet phone service at this point. We had an outage last friday, were we could not make outgoing calls. Called technical support and they said they were working on the problem. The next day it was fixed. It sounds different than a land line, they have a false dial tone, and if you hit redial, it misses the first digit or two. There is still some static noise, and the third tech said it's probably becuase of our "older" telephone lines in our house which probably are overloaded with the digital signal.

We were still having issues with pixilation and blackouts. Then the third technician came out and she was also very good. She tested the lines going to our house and said those were ok. She replaced the cabeling going to our 3 tv's and replaced the main box. She made numerous calls in to her boss and to the main support people. As of now, on our two non HDTV's there is limited "pixilation" or issues. We still get some, but from reading other posts it's probably not any worse than normal. On our HDTV, it's an issue still. I've set my U-verse receiver to Wide-Screen analog mode. When on 1040i mode or the 720 mode we get moments of black screens fairly often on all channels. Often enough to be annoying. Our TV is about 6 or so years old. The Techs boss said this is a known issue for some TV's, but it's a low priority fix until enough people complain to get it fixed. Or at least something like that. I also read that it's because of the signal strength U-verse sends to the tv. I wonder if there's some sort of filter or something that one could use to fix it? When we had Time Warner we did not have this issue with the HD or non HD channels.

As it is now, I can live with it. My wife's not too happy with it, mainly because of the issues with the install and our dial out phone service not being available for a day. I wish AMC was on U-verse and I really miss WBAY's weather channel which I don't find on U-verse, nor does it have the local on the eight on the weather channel. I'm still disappointed I cannot watch my HD channels in HD.

I'm looking forward to the whole house DVR options.

Love the TV guide on U-verse and search function. Although the guild sometimes is a bit slow loading and harder to navigate to future times/days. Scheduling series is much better. I had the time warner people come out numerous times to fix an issue with the DVR not taping a particular series correctly or erasing my recording instructions. I even tried a new DVR. The last guy said it was a known and easy fixed. I wasn't too happy with him, because when I got home he had changed all my TV preferences to something else and the issue happend again shortly after.