# Roamio Pro and AT&T U-Verse



## andrews777 (Aug 23, 2007)

Can anyone tell me if it is possible to use a Roamio Pro with U-Verse? I expect to be moving to an area that has U-Verse soon, though I believe some kind of cable provider is an alternative. I will lament the loss of Verizon Fios, but they don't cover the area I am moving to.


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## Teeps (Aug 16, 2001)

andrews777 said:


> Can anyone tell me if it is possible to use a Roamio Pro with U-Verse? I expect to be moving to an area that has U-Verse soon, though I believe some kind of cable provider is an alternative. I will lament the loss of Verizon Fios, but they don't cover the area I am moving to.


No.

While I cannot lament the loss of FIOS, my area is not covered by FIOS either.
ATT uvers & timewarner cable are my choices or OTA.


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## andrews777 (Aug 23, 2007)

Teeps said:


> No.
> 
> While I cannot lament the loss of FIOS, my area is not covered by FIOS either.
> ATT uvers & timewarner cable are my choices or OTA.


So I need to find out which cable company covers that area and plan on going with them?


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## Arcady (Oct 14, 2004)

andrews777 said:


> So I need to find out which cable company covers that area and plan on going with them?


Yes.

U-verse sucks anyway.


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## Dan203 (Apr 17, 2000)

The biggest issue with U-verse is that you're limited to 2-4 simultaneous streams. (depending on technology used in your area) It's like having a max of 2-4 tuners for your entire house. If you're like most of the people on this forum that's probably not enough for you.


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## tarheelblue32 (Jan 13, 2014)

U-verse is usually garbage. Going with the cable company is almost always preferable.

Regardless, a Roamio won't work with U-verse.


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## andrews777 (Aug 23, 2007)

tarheelblue32 said:


> U-verse is usually garbage. Going with the cable company is almost always preferable.
> 
> Regardless, a Roamio won't work with U-verse.


Wow. I have not been impressed with cable support in the past. I have been spoiled by Verizon it seems, even though they are not as strong as they were when Fios first rolled out.


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## tarheelblue32 (Jan 13, 2014)

andrews777 said:


> Wow. I have not been impressed with cable support in the past. I have been spoiled by Verizon it seems, even though they are not as strong as they were when Fios first rolled out.


The problem with U-verse is that it is built around inferior infrastructure. Unlike Verizon, AT&T cheaped out and never bothered to upgrade the last mile to fiber. Unshielded telephone wires were never designed to carry large amounts of data the way shielded coax cables or fiber-optic cables were. Because of this, U-verse has extremely limited bandwidth, which is why they limit your number of simultaneous TV streams and compress the crap out of those streams. And if you bundle in internet with them (and just like with cable, it's usually cheaper to bundle) then your internet bandwidth and TV bandwidth are shared. If you turn on your TV, your internet speeds might grind to a snail's pace, depending on how far away your house is from AT&T's VRAD.


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## Dan203 (Apr 17, 2000)

Yeah it's basically 45Mbps max. Figure each TV stream takes ~6Mbps which means with 4 streams going you've given over have your bandwidth to TV. And the 45Mbps technology is only available in some areas, some are limited to 24Mbps which means that you only get 3 TV streams and 6Mbps left over for internet. 

It's really a crappy way to do it. Which is likely why they are trying to buy DirecTV. If they can push the TV portion over to the dish and give you the entire DSL bandwidth for internet then they'll be able to compete better with cable.


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## tarheelblue32 (Jan 13, 2014)

Dan203 said:


> Yeah it's basically 45Mbps max. Figure each TV stream takes ~6Mbps which means with 4 streams going you've given over have your bandwidth to TV. And the 45Mbps technology is only available in some areas, some are limited to 24Mbps which means that you only get 3 TV streams and 6Mbps left over for internet.
> 
> It's really a crappy way to do it. Which is likely why they are trying to buy DirecTV. If they can push the TV portion over to the dish and give you the entire DSL bandwidth for internet then they'll be able to compete better with cable.


Yeah I think I'm one of the people who would be "capped" at 24Mbps, and I honestly doubt I'd be able to actually get that in reality. My house is over half a mile away from the VRAD, and the telephone lines here are decades old and not in great shape. We've had door-to-door U-verse salesmen come around several times, and each time I just chuckle that they are even attempting to make the sale to someone this far away from the VRAD, and then I send them on their merry way.

About the only use I have for U-verse is when I call up TWC's retention department every year and threaten to switch to U-verse if they don't give me another 12-month price reduction. It's obviously an idle threat, but thankfully they don't seem to realize that.


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## Chris Gerhard (Apr 27, 2002)

I had the U-verse 24Mbps internet service without TV subscription for a year and it consistently tested at about that rate with absolutely no downtime, the service was great for my needs. I switched to Comcast as a result of a promo but wouldn't hesitate to switch back.


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## tarheelblue32 (Jan 13, 2014)

Chris Gerhard said:


> I had the U-verse 24Mbps internet service without TV subscription for a year and it consistently tested at about that rate with absolutely no downtime, the service was great for my needs. I switched to Comcast as a result of a promo but wouldn't hesitate to switch back.


If you're only using it for internet and you're within a reasonable distance from the VRAD, then U-verse internet is probably a decent alternative. But using them for both TV and internet is usually going to be a bad idea.


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## Teeps (Aug 16, 2001)

Dan203 said:


> It's really a crappy way to do it. Which is likely why they are trying to buy DirecTV.
> 
> If they can push the TV portion over to the dish and give you the entire DSL bandwidth for internet then they'll be able to compete better with cable.


A DirectTV insider told me it was to increase ATT's reach into areas that they do not, or cannot, serve with their wired service.
Increasing internet speed,as I was told, was not the plan. But would be a serendipitous improvement, for those that could be served by both. 
For the folks not served by ATT, nothing would change other than to whom the payment was paid.


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## atmuscarella (Oct 11, 2005)

Teeps said:


> A DirectTV insider told me it was to increase ATT's reach into areas that they do not, or cannot, serve with their wired service.
> Increasing internet speed,as I was told, was not the plan. But would be a serendipitous improvement, for those that could be served by both.
> For the folks not served by ATT, nothing would change other than to whom the payment was paid.


I assume once AT&T owns DirectTV that will open up the option of bundling various AT&T service with DirectTV. In my area AT&T is not the local phone company so they offer a "Home Phone" alternative, plus their normal Cell Phone services, plus I assume they offer home 3G/4G wireless Internet service like Verizon does. So I can see them offering some bundles in the future to be more competitive with the local cable and telephone company (my local phone (Frontier) bundles with Dish). Even where AT&T has U-verse a home phone/Internet/DirectTV bundle maybe more competitive than U-Verse.


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## tghosh (Dec 3, 2014)

Chris Gerhard said:


> I had the U-verse 24Mbps internet service without TV subscription for a year and it consistently tested at about that rate with absolutely no downtime, the service was great for my needs. I switched to Comcast as a result of a promo but wouldn't hesitate to switch back.


and you were content with the 1.5Mbps Upload cap?? AT&T are absurd if they think that low of a cap is acceptable


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## atmuscarella (Oct 11, 2005)

tghosh said:


> and you were content with the 1.5Mbps Upload cap?? AT&T are absurd if they think that low of a cap is acceptable


Well I just ran a speed test of my so called 6Mbps Frontier DSL and my download speed was only 1.32 Mbps & upload was only 0.38Mbps. So if someone wants to bump up my ISPs speed to AT&T U-verse speeds I would be ecstatic.


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## Dan203 (Apr 17, 2000)

Chris Gerhard said:


> I had the U-verse 24Mbps internet service without TV subscription for a year and it consistently tested at about that rate with absolutely no downtime, the service was great for my needs. I switched to Comcast as a result of a promo but wouldn't hesitate to switch back.


They just started offering 45/6 service here and I've thought about switching just for internet. It's actually faster then what Charter can offer me (30/4) and about the same price. But switching is such a PITA and I don't really want another bill to pay at the end of the month. Charter says they're increasing us to 60/5 "soon". Hopefully the competition from AT&T will light a fire under their a$$.


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## jcthorne (Jan 28, 2002)

If you are even THINKING of going with ATT DSL or 'uverse' internet. Be very aware of thier data caps. MUCH lower than you are used to with cable. If you stream video from netflix, amazon etc you will hit them. Service gets very expensive above the caps.


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## Dan203 (Apr 17, 2000)

Didn't know that. Looks like it's 250GB for U-verse, but they don't currently enforce it. At least according to a recent thread on their forum. 

I watch a LOT of streaming content. I also download games on my Xbox, download big video files for work, etc... I'd never want to deal with a data cap. Well if it was just an extra charge I'd be OK with it, but if they start throttling me or messing with my connection in any way that would be unacceptable.


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## moyekj (Jan 24, 2006)

Cox here has 250 GB monthly data limit as well for my tier. Back when I was watching a lot of Netflix at best quality I went past the limit 15 days into the month and got some "friendly" emails from Cox suggesting I upgrade to the next tier which gives you a whole 300 GB (what a joke that is). I went way over the limit for 3 months straight without penalty, but ultimately as I stopped watching Netflix myself and only the kids use it, I changed the settings in Netflix to lowest quality to solve the problem (kids watch Netflix on their puny mobile devices anyway so it doesn't make any difference to them).

I fear it won't be long before these ISP providers are going to start charging per GB like the cell phone companies do. Either that or they will start throttling your data rates heavily down once you exceed some arbitrary limit, again as phone companies do.


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## Dan203 (Apr 17, 2000)

I'm willing to pay per GB if I have to, but if they start throttling me I'm going to be p*ssed. If they want to charge me more for being a heavy user that's one thing, but making it so the service is completely unusable after a certain point is unacceptable.


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## jcthorne (Jan 28, 2002)

Dan203 said:


> Didn't know that. Looks like it's 250GB for U-verse, but they don't currently enforce it. At least according to a recent thread on their forum.
> 
> I watch a LOT of streaming content. I also download games on my Xbox, download big video files for work, etc... I'd never want to deal with a data cap. Well if it was just an extra charge I'd be OK with it, but if they start throttling me or messing with my connection in any way that would be unacceptable.


They do enforce and they do bill the overage charges which are LARGE.

It was far cheaper for me to contract a Comcast Business line than to pay ATT overage charges. (Comcast has caps here too for Xfinity users).


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## jcthorne (Jan 28, 2002)

Dan203 said:


> I'm willing to pay per GB if I have to, but if they start throttling me I'm going to be p*ssed. If they want to charge me more for being a heavy user that's one thing, but making it so the service is completely unusable after a certain point is unacceptable.


Is $600 a month for 1TB of data acceptable? Thats where ATT went....


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## Dan203 (Apr 17, 2000)

jcthorne said:


> Is $600 a month for 1TB of data acceptable? Thats where ATT went....


Ouch. I don't think I use that much data, but I don't really know. I do watch a lot of streaming stuff, and have downloaded a few 20+ GB Xbox games.


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## jcthorne (Jan 28, 2002)

Its a lot of data. But my bill went from $25 a month to hundreds for 6Mbps. Comcast has me contracted at 99 for unlimited and no throttling, 50Mbps. Still think its way too high for internet service but with near zero competition, its what you get. I don't like the price or the (lack of) customer service. But I will admit that I get what I contracted for and very minimal slowdowns, even in prime time and I get more than 50 in off periods.


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