# AT&T u-verse help



## Surrealone (Dec 8, 2006)

Ok I need help AT&T is trying to get me to change to u-verse and I can save a few $ But right now I'm on Cox and really have no problems. I live in south orange county.

From my understanding TiVo does not work with u-verse but I called Tivo and was told that it does kind of and it is a work in progress with TiVo and AT&T.

So has anybody changed? And can I get some feedback before I switch to the evil AT&T over lord


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## lessd (Jan 23, 2005)

Surrealone said:


> Ok I need help AT&T is trying to get me to change to u-verse and I can save a few $ But right now I'm on Cox and really have no problems. I live in south orange county.
> 
> From my understanding TiVo does not work with u-verse but I called Tivo and was told that it does kind of and it is a work in progress with TiVo and AT&T.
> 
> So has anybody changed? And can I get some feedback before I switch to the evil AT&T over lord


HD model TiVos will not work with ATT u-verse, unless ATT has made a change I don't know about, as we also have the option of changing and friends of have changed, it is IP based and only their DVR will work and you can get only 3 HD stations at one time, so a 6 tuner TiVo would not do you much good if it did work.


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## Surrealone (Dec 8, 2006)

The number of HD channels on at the same time with 4 TV's and internet will depend on throughput/bandwidth and distance from the switch. it is fiber to the switch on the street. But copper to my townhouse. Yes it is IP based and I think they only run 2 or 4 pair so speed will be limited I think..


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## lessd (Jan 23, 2005)

Surrealone said:


> The number of HD channels on at the same time with 4 TV's and internet will depend on throughput/bandwidth and distance from the switch. it is fiber to the switch on the street. But copper to my townhouse. Yes it is IP based and I think they only run 2 or 4 pair so speed will be limited I think..


You can get 4 ch at the same time but not all will be in HD and I think the ch bit rate is like 12/mbs vs about 19/mbs on the networks ch from Comcast.


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## Surrealone (Dec 8, 2006)

sounds like it's not going to work... How does the Tivo connect to at&t? cable cards? do I still need a tuning adapter?


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## tarheelblue32 (Jan 13, 2014)

Surrealone said:


> sounds like it's not going to work... How does the Tivo connect to at&t? cable cards? do I still need a tuning adapter?


I don't know who you talked to at TiVo or what they told you exactly, but TiVo will not work with U-verse at all. If you switch to U-verse, you will have to use U-verse equipment.


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## Surrealone (Dec 8, 2006)

tarheelblue32 said:


> I don't know who you talked to at TiVo or what they told you exactly, but TiVo will not work with U-verse at all.


Ok That's what I thought. I did not get a name was in a big hurry but I did talk to support and what she told me was TiVo will work with AT&T u-verse but it was not perfected yet and it was a work in progress....

Thanks...:up:


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## kettledrum (Nov 17, 2003)

I've been subscribing to U-Verse off and on for around 5 years. Unfortunately, the only TiVos that will work with U-Verse are Series 2 and older machines, with an IR blaster to change channels.


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## MikeAndrews (Jan 17, 2002)

tarheelblue32 said:


> I don't know who you talked to at TiVo or what they told you exactly, but TiVo will not work with U-verse at all. If you switch to U-verse, you will have to use U-verse equipment.


QUOTE=kettledrum;10316279]I've been subscribing to U-Verse off and on for around 5 years. Unfortunately, the only TiVos that will work with U-Verse are Series 2 and older machines, with an IR blaster to change channels.[/QUOTE]

Right. An SD TiVo will work with Uverse through a set top box, but only record in SD and one channel at a time.

There's not much point unless you want to offload the shows in SD.

I just discovered that on Uverse, you can watch some channels live on a mobile smartphone or tablet now.


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## LoadStar (Jul 24, 2001)

It's my experience that U-Verse sales people have been known to repeatedly lie* about TiVo and their service.

*To be charitable, I suppose they could just be mistaken or misled by others.


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## tarheelblue32 (Jan 13, 2014)

LoadStar said:


> It's my experience that U-Verse sales people have been known to repeatedly lie* about TiVo and their service.
> 
> *To be charitable, I suppose they could just be mistaken or misled by others.


But the OP said he called *TiVo* and they told him that TiVo "kind of" works with U-verse, which really makes no sense at all why anyone at TiVo would tell him that.


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## jrtroo (Feb 4, 2008)

Well, it kind of can as you can use their internet service for guide data.


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## tarheelblue32 (Jan 13, 2014)

jrtroo said:


> Well, it kind of can as you can use their internet service for guide data.


LOL I hadn't thought of that. But you are correct! You can get guide data and can use the streaming apps through U-verse internet, you just can't use it to watch or record U-verse TV channels.


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## Surrealone (Dec 8, 2006)

LoadStar said:


> It's my experience that U-Verse sales people have been known to repeatedly lie* about TiVo and their service.
> 
> *To be charitable, I suppose they could just be mistaken or misled by others.


I agree I have and heard them lie right to me face when standing at my door trying to sale me services.

The big lie is one they like to repeat over and over and that is u-verse is fiber optic that seems to be the big buzz word sales rep's like to use. But what they fail to tell you it will be sent to your home over 50 year old copper the fiber might be new in the street but until you bring the fiber to my house. forget about it....


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## MikeAndrews (Jan 17, 2002)

LoadStar said:


> It's my experience that U-Verse sales people have been known to repeatedly lie* about TiVo and their service.
> 
> *To be charitable, I suppose they could just be mistaken or misled by others.


They might mean TiVo=DVR, like DevilTV did for years. It was just a misunderstanding/miscommunication. That's the story and they're sticking to it.


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## DougJohnson (Dec 12, 2006)

Surrealone said:


> ...until you bring the fiber to my house. forget about it....


They're doing that in some cities. Google "gigapower".
-- Doug


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## tarheelblue32 (Jan 13, 2014)

DougJohnson said:


> They're doing that in some cities. Google "gigapower".
> -- Doug


Barely. They have done some FTTH deployments in new construction, high-income developments, but "gigapower" is mostly smoke and mirrors.


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## jrtroo (Feb 4, 2008)

Surrealone said:


> I agree I have and heard them lie right to me face when standing at my door trying to sale me services.
> 
> The big lie is one they like to repeat over and over and that is u-verse is fiber optic that seems to be the big buzz word sales rep's like to use. But what they fail to tell you it will be sent to your home over 50 year old copper the fiber might be new in the street but until you bring the fiber to my house. forget about it....


I think, for the most part, their reps are poorly trained and have no idea that they are not really just selling cable subscriptions through the phone lines. Is under-informed a lie?


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## DougJohnson (Dec 12, 2006)

tarheelblue32 said:


> Barely. They have done some FTTH deployments in new construction, high-income developments, but "gigapower" is mostly smoke and mirrors.


Nope. I could sign up for it tomorrow and my neighborhood is over 60 years old. -- Doug


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## tarheelblue32 (Jan 13, 2014)

DougJohnson said:


> Nope. I could sign up for it tomorrow and my neighborhood is over 60 years old. -- Doug


Really? And AT&T would run a fiberoptic cable to your house? Where do you live?


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## DougJohnson (Dec 12, 2006)

tarheelblue32 said:


> Really? And AT&T would run a fiberoptic cable to your house? Where do you live?


Yep. It's currently available in Austin, Dallas, and Fort Worth Texas areas. See 
https://gigaom.com/2013/12/10/heres-how-att-is-going-to-build-its-gigabit-service-in-austin/

-- Doug


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## tarheelblue32 (Jan 13, 2014)

DougJohnson said:


> Yep. It's currently available in Austin, Dallas, and Fort Worth Texas areas. See
> https://gigaom.com/2013/12/10/heres-how-att-is-going-to-build-its-gigabit-service-in-austin/
> 
> -- Doug


Yeah I did know about Austin because of the Google Fiber coming to town, didn't know about Dallas. Still, you said you could sign up for it tomorrow, but if you did, how long would it actually take for them to acutally get around to running the fiber line to your home? I'm guessing it would be a long time before you actually got it, if ever.

http://www.dslreports.com/shownews/ATTs-Expansion-of-1-Gbps-to-100-Cities-is-a-Big-Fat-Bluff-128628


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## DougJohnson (Dec 12, 2006)

tarheelblue32 said:


> Yeah I did know about Austin because of the Google Fiber coming to town, didn't know about Dallas. Still, you said you could sign up for it tomorrow, but if you did, how long would it actually take for them to acutally get around to running the fiber line to your home? I'm guessing it would be a long time before you actually got it, if ever.
> 
> http://www.dslreports.com/shownews/ATTs-Expansion-of-1-Gbps-to-100-Cities-is-a-Big-Fat-Bluff-128628


Since I haven't ordered it, I obviously don't know. But AT&T is spending a lot mailing out ads for it. It is easy enough to find reports from users online.

That article is pretty much unsupported speculation.

-- Doug


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## tarheelblue32 (Jan 13, 2014)

DougJohnson said:


> That article is pretty much unsupported speculation.


Fair enough. If you can find a reliable source that says just how many people currently have access to true FTTH "Gigapower" from AT&T, I would be very interested in seeing it. I've looked and haven't been able to find any hard numbers.


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## LeonC (Nov 6, 2014)

Not AT&T, but more and more smaller companies are beginning to run fiber to homes. Here in NC, I had fiber-to-home installed over a year ago. It took less than a week for installation to my 50 year old house which is not in the city. I use OTA for TV, but neighbors with Time-Warner cable are getting much better deals without asking, just trying to keep them from going to fiber.

http://www.northstatefiber.com


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## DougJohnson (Dec 12, 2006)

tarheelblue32 said:


> Fair enough. If you can find a reliable source that says just how many people currently have access to true FTTH "Gigapower" from AT&T, I would be very interested in seeing it. I've looked and haven't been able to find any hard numbers.


Well, I can contribute some speculation and a fact.

Availability is pretty limited even in the three targeted cities, primarily the more upscale areas. So I'm speculating maybe 100,000 or so people nationwide.

The fact is I called AT&T customer service. The rep was very nice and tried very hard to be helpful, but you can't order Gigapower over the phone, only online. I asked her about installation times and she said she didn't really know because she couldn't order it, but she was seeing accounts where it was being installed in 5 days or so.

-- Doug


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## Bigg (Oct 31, 2003)

lessd said:


> You can get 4 ch at the same time but not all will be in HD and I think the ch bit rate is like 12/mbs vs about 19/mbs on the networks ch from Comcast.


Try 6mbps MPEG-4 vs. 8-16mbps, typically 12mbps MPEG-2.

There is no reason that AT&T couldn't support TiVo if TiVo allowed them to bake their code into the Roamio's software and connection via Ethernet, but there are no plans to ever add support for TiVo, and hell will probably freeze over before that happens.



LoadStar said:


> It's my experience that U-Verse sales people have been known to repeatedly lie* about TiVo and their service.
> 
> *To be charitable, I suppose they could just be mistaken or misled by others.


It's a lie. It's pretty obvious that TiVo doesn't work with U-Verse.



Surrealone said:


> The big lie is one they like to repeat over and over and that is u-verse is fiber optic that seems to be the big buzz word sales rep's like to use. But what they fail to tell you it will be sent to your home over 50 year old copper the fiber might be new in the street but until you bring the fiber to my house. forget about it....


The really ironic part is that on average, the cable companies actually have fiber closer to the end users than U-Verse does. It's not always the case, a friend of mine's parents have Frontier U-Verse, and their VRAD is literally <100' to their house, but if Frontier puts a VRAD where my parents live, their Comcast node will be a good half-mile closer to them than U-Verse's VRAD. It's not entirely a lie, but if they want to call U-Verse "fiber", than Comcast is just as much, or more "fiber" than U-Verse is.


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