# Replacing my DirectTivo with ATT Universe



## DouglasPHill (Feb 10, 2005)

I left my DirecTV Tivo on and still hooked up to the satellite. (but not connected to a TV)

AT&T installed Uverse yesterday at my house. Wanted to share what Ive learned so far. My first incorrect assumption was that Uverse would require its own wire to my house. I figured they would run a coax. Nope, Uverse uses your regular phone line. In my case, since my phone line was 35 years old, they did run a new wire from the poll to my house. They ran a CAT5e phone wire but told me numerous times that they were really only using two of the wires. The installer was here for 6 hours, even though I already had wiring in place to my various devices. 

So the phone line comes to a junction box outside your house where they split the signal, phone and data. Since they split it outside your house, when the phone signal comes in to your house, you do not need any of those filters on your phones that you have to use with DSL. The phone wire inside your house only has phone. 

The data wire, which has video and internet, comes into your house separately as its own CAT5e. Again, they said they were only using two of the wires inside it. My house was already wired with CAT5e to my various computers and coax to my tvs. The Uverse 2Wire brand box that receives the incoming data signal has lots of connectors for using the various wires. I like 2Wire, Ive had really good experience with them compared to other modems/switches and the like. 

Ok, DVR stuff. One of the selling points is that you can record up to 4 things at a time. I did a little experimenting last night and the number of things you can record also depends if your other tuners are on. In other words, I had them install two tuners, in addition to the DVR. If one of those tuners is on, it takes up one of the four. I may be slightly wrong here but that is what I saw happen last night. When I powered down that tuner, it then enabled the DVR to record a 4th thing. Also, once the DVR was recording 4 things,
when I turned on one of the other tuners, I got a message that it couldnt show me anything since the DVR was using all of the channels.

No dual buffers, ouch my son was really upset by this. Font size on the guide and other screens is so large that you can only see about six lines. I could not find where to tell it to use a smaller font size. In addition to video ofcourse is Internet access and I can tell you it is really fast.

Hope the above info helps others make an informed decision.


----------



## vigfoot (Dec 1, 2003)

thanks for the info.

i'm surprised at the omission of dual buffers on dvrs, unless it's proprietary, which i believe isn't the case, based upon another thread here.

dual buffers is a requirement of mine. :up:


----------



## RS4 (Sep 2, 2001)

DouglasPHill said:


> I left my DirecTV Tivo on and still hooked up to the satellite. (but not connected to a TV)
> 
> AT&T installed Uverse yesterday at my house. Wanted to share what Ive learned so far. My first incorrect assumption was that Uverse would require its own wire to my house. I figured they would run a coax. Nope, Uverse uses your regular phone line. In my case, since my phone line was 35 years old, they did run a new wire from the poll to my house. They ran a CAT5e phone wire but told me numerous times that they were really only using two of the wires. The installer was here for 6 hours, even though I already had wiring in place to my various devices.
> 
> ...


Do you have an HD TV? My understanding is the Uverse only has capacity for one HD channel at a time. Can you verify that?


----------



## Dkerr24 (Oct 29, 2004)

Thanks for the review! U-Verse is coming to my area, and the more I read about it, the less willing I am to let go of my SD DTivo units. I'm spoiled on being able to move programs from my Tivo's to PC, then onto portable devices.

I'm quite happy with my DSL speed, the only thing that would increase by going to U-Verse would be my upload speed, which really doesn't matter that much.


----------



## DouglasPHill (Feb 10, 2005)

I've heard that you can only have one HD television. I do not own any so I cannot confirm or disprove this. Sorry.


----------



## Gunnyman (Jul 10, 2003)

So U-Verse is no FiOS huh? 
/bangs head against wall for not living in a verizon service area.


----------



## TonyTheTiger (Dec 22, 2006)

Gunnyman said:


> So U-Verse is no FiOS huh?
> /bangs head against wall for not living in a verizon service area.


Nope - it's copper for the last stretch and not all FiO. I only found this out recently. Apparently it sucks compared to FIOS - then again, everything else does too!!


----------



## Gunnyman (Jul 10, 2003)

The rub is, I have fiber on my street
Verizon OWNED as far as I know, but it's dark.


----------



## JFriday (Mar 20, 2002)

RS4 said:


> Do you have an HD TV? My understanding is the Uverse only has capacity for one HD channel at a time. Can you verify that?


Yes only one HD channel at a time, I had a free month of U-verse a couple months ago when they upgraded our line. I was glad to get it out of th house.


----------



## DouglasPHill (Feb 10, 2005)

Hi everyone,
Wanted to give you an update. Been on Uverse for 8 days now. I really, really miss my dual buffers. Sometimes the DVR will just turn off the tv on its own. Picture quality, non HD, is very good. The bar along the bottom of the screen, that TIVO uses to indicate where you are timewise in the show you are watching, doesn't work like that in Uverse. I think its basically a clock in Uverse. Many times when I turn on the DVR/TV first thing in the morning, it reports that the channels are parental locked. (even though they are not) No folders for recordings. Can use Internet from work to program DVR at home. I really, really miss dual buffers. I have recorded three things at the same time, nice. Has a neat feature where you can tell it to do a season pass, but limit it to one episode per day. Does not really understand what "first run only" means. 

HTH - Doug
PS - I did not cancel my DirecTV-TIVO service, just told them to put me on vacation for a few months.


----------



## TerryJ1 (Feb 2, 2008)

I am having Uverse installed in two weeks. Inside the home are they going to run new Cat5e lines to my TV's??? All of my walls and ceilings, including the basement, are finished drywall.


----------



## rbtravis (Aug 9, 2005)

What does this have to do with Directv or TiVo? Perhaps you are in the wrong forum. We do not specialize in drywall or ATT installers. At least DouglasPHill has and is keeping his TiVo.


----------



## doncoolio (Jul 9, 2006)

http://www.dslreports.com/forum/uverse

This is a more relevant forum for U-Verse questions.


----------



## MikeAndrews (Jan 17, 2002)

DouglasPHill said:


> I've heard that you can only have one HD television. I do not own any so I cannot confirm or disprove this. Sorry.


You can up to 5(?) HD or SD STBs or DVRs. The problem is as it stands you can have only one HD feed at a time. It will be 2 at a time soon. They'll have 10mbps internet at the same time.

It's Video over IP so the network infrastructure has to have the bandwidth to carry the live feeds. My guess is that AT&T roll out higher bandwidth later as they increase the considerable investment they're making.

They'll be forced to keep adding bandwidth as HD becomes the norm in a few years.

Hopefully, that also means that all video providers will eventually have to dump the extra fees for HD service. At some point, charging extra for HD would be like if they now had an extra charge for color TV.

I'll have Uverse soon. I can't wait to dump $$ DirecTV but I'll run in parallel for a while. I think I'll get one or more Series 2 SA TiVos for use on UVerse.


----------



## DouglasPHill (Feb 10, 2005)

Hi everyone,
Another week has gone by. To sum it up, I think there is great potential with ATT Uverse, but right now, its just not ready. If you waited a few months, maybe a year, the implementation will be much better. I have posted a list of about 11 items on the utalk.att.com board, similar to this board, of must have features. I have no idea whether any ATT programmers read the board, let alone whether my 11 items are under any consideration, or whether they figure I am just a TIVO whacko. 

The board is very helpful, just as this one is. If I survive for a total of 3 months, thats when I have to tell Direct if I want to come back from vacation. If your interested in hearing how this plays out, I'd be happy to post an update. (Just don't want to violate any TIVO community rules. My entire reason for this thread is to just give you knowledge so you can make informed decisions.) 

Thanks


----------



## Dkerr24 (Oct 29, 2004)

Thanks for the update. I'm going to sit on the fence and let U-Verse pass me by for now. I'll let the beta testers (current U-Verse customers) work out all the bugs.


----------



## DouglasPHill (Feb 10, 2005)

Hi everyone,
One small update: this week the video feed from ATT failed for at least an hour. Don't know exactly how long because I was asleep. Anyway, interesting, when there is no video feed from ATT, you cannot get at your recorded content. 
So, have added another TODO to my list of 11 things that ATT needs to improve in their DVR. The DVR did get an update last night, but it did not address any of the 12 items in my list. I just wish ATT would throw me a bone and post if and when any of my 12 items will be addressed. Otherwise, come March my DirecTivo will be back online.


----------

