Originally posted by: nsafreak
Generally I too have heard that a lot of people dislike it and end up going back. The biggest issue that people seem to have with it is the amount of bandwidth available to the video service. Last I had heard you were limited to one HD stream for the household. You could not watch one HD program and record a different one. That could have changed though. I think if you want to go with an IP television solution then Verizon's FIOS seems to be the one getting better reviews at the moment.
FIOS is not IPTV, only (at best) their VOD is IPTV. The "normal" video service is plain old digital cable, nothing special about it, with the same bandwidth constraints as regular digital cableTV.
Most U-Verse is delivered as 2+2 (2 concurrent HD plus 2 concurrent SD inbound), with an additional four streams internally for the Total Home DVR (so, eight streams active at a time, four inbound plus four from THDVR) all at the same time.
If the infrastructure or distance doesn't permit 2+2 (soon to be 3HD+2SD), then you get the 1HD+3SD. If you can't get 1+3, you can't get U-Verse; that's the least they offer.
uverseusers.com and utalk.att.com are good places to get a feel for U-verse, but keep in mind that people are less likely to post "Wow this is great" (so, you see more complaints) and there are quite a few cable marketing types posting negative comments on both boards in the interest of generating FUD (Fear, Uncertainty, and Doubt).
U-verse now has more HD channels (100+) in every market in which it competes with cable (any cable) and is cutting into their market more every day. Posting FUD on the U-verse boards is one of their ways to try to counter it.
As for the HD quality, U-Verse and Verizon use the same CODECS in most markets, dialed into the same compression. Both are updating as possible on a per-video center basis, so in most markets, quality is virtually identical, in some markets one will have an advantage over the other, at least for some random period.
U-Verse and FIOS also use exactly the same infrastructure components for their all-fiber systems; the only difference with the copper system is the DSLAM, which is functionally identical to the fiber for the IP services (POTS is handled differently with fiber and copper DSLAMs).
My only suggestion to the OP would be to go with the UTP/Cat5e installation option (instead of using any existing coax). GENERALLY SPEAKING, there tends to be fewer problems with UTP in terms of noise handling by the Residential Gateway, DVR, and STB.
Other new feature coming up on U-Verse ("rumors") are things like wireless STBs, using an X-Box360 for STBs, pair-bonding (adds distance and bandwidth), and other applications (like the existing U-Bar that ties you your Yahoo page, Weather on demand from Accuweather, and the March Madness brackets / tracker ...).
I've had it since July, I gave up the Platinum Direct-TV package for it with no regrets, I love it. However, I am not a fan of VoIP, so I still have POTs service. I like "battery powered phone" with five-nines reliability.
FWIW
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