DirecTV Now to rebrand under AT&T TV family.
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Yeah, essentially AT&T TV is a better, more technologically modern version of Uverse TV. And one of the main benefits that AT&T TV has is that it's technologically flexible enough to be deployed over AT&T's own network (with all of the network efficiency benefits that Uverse TV offers) but it can also be deployed nationwide, over other providers' networks too. Anyone with internet service with a download speed of, say, 10 Mbps can get AT&T TV and watch it on one screen at full-quality 1080p HD. (If you want to watch on additional screens at the same time, you'd need faster internet or be willing for the picture quality of your streams to get downgraded to maybe mediocre-looking 720p HD.) It's because of this flexibility that AT&T TV can serve as a direct replacement for Uverse TV but also be a nationwide service that replaces DirecTV satellite for anyone with fast enough home internet.
Leaked internet screenshots from AT&T confirm what a local AT&T installer told me some time ago, which is that once AT&T TV becomes available in 9 pilot markets this month, Uverse TV will cease to be sold to new customers there. We can only assume that Uverse TV will cease to be sold anywhere at all once AT&T TV launches nationwide this fall. One person who claimed to work inside AT&T posted on a site awhile back that Uverse TV would continue to operate and be available to existing customers for a long time -- I think he said 4 years? -- after it ceases to be sold to new customers.
That sounds like an unnecessarily long phase-out period to me. I don't know why it couldn't be done in 18-24 months if AT&T began sending physical mail and email touting AT&T TV in Jan. 2020 to their Uverse TV customers. Spend six months enticing them to come over voluntarily, then in mid-2020, tell them that Uverse TV will shut down one year later. Spend that year offering special incentives to transition their account over to AT&T TV (switch today and score a $50 Visa gift card!). Come mid-2021, if there are still a lot of stragglers clinging to their Uverse remotes, give them an additional 3-6 months, taking drastic measures like a forced message that appears briefly on screen every time they turn the TV on ("TV service to this receiver will soon be discontinued. Call 1-800... to adjust your account and ensure that your TV service from AT&T is not disrupted."). Then once the deadline arrives, the receiver would do nothing when turned on but auto-play a pre-recorded message telling them how to switch to AT&T TV and showing how AT&T TV works with testimonials from former Uverse TV customers about how much better it is.
At any point during the Uverse TV phase-out period, I doubt that AT&T would even ask customers to take their receivers to a UPS Store for free return shipping. (This is how equipment always get turned back in to AT&T now.) Those old receivers are essentially worthless. Any recycling value they might have would be outweighed by the return shipping charges that AT&T would pay. To switch to AT&T TV, customers would simply need to opt in via phone, website or perhaps even using an interactive channel/app on the Uverse receiver by TV remote. The AT&T TV bo
es) would arrive via UPS for simple self-install and the old Uverse receiver could be thrown away or recycled at Best Buy.
Why would AT&T care about trying to shorten the transition time? They were not in any rush to drop MPEG2 SD from Directv. Hardly any cable companies have dropped MPEG2 in fact, despite the obvious benefits of MPEG4 as far as allowing the use of more bandwidth for internet. These things always take longer than one "assumes" they should from the outside, because prodding customers to transition has costs in terms of losing some to the competition (some customers will maintain the status quo forever if you let them, but if you force them to change they'll take the opportunity to look around at other options besides the one you present them) so they let attrition do most of the work for them before they force the small number of remaining laggards to move.
You do realize they had to wait for T16 before they were going to do the MP4 transition. I believe there is a technical reason with the satellite transponders and how it’s configured on why they waited to do the transition.
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Dumping U-Verse let’s them use their spectrum on the fiber more efficiently.
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Doubtful that it happens that quickly ...
They will quit selling it, but they will continue to have it for awhile at the very least ....
If I have to fix the lines for Internet, I am fixing the very SAME lines for U Verse TV ...
ATT Internet isn't going anywhere for a LONG time .... Very few areas have Fiber available to them as an option ... they cities alone will never be All fiber.
Can you imagine the backlash they would take if they did that ?Yeah, essentially AT&T TV is a better, more technologically modern version of Uverse TV. And one of the main benefits that AT&T TV has is that it's technologically flexible enough to be deployed over AT&T's own network (with all of the network efficiency benefits that Uverse TV offers) but it can also be deployed nationwide, over other providers' networks too. Anyone with internet service with a download speed of, say, 10 Mbps can get AT&T TV and watch it on one screen at full-quality 1080p HD. (If you want to watch on additional screens at the same time, you'd need faster internet or be willing for the picture quality of your streams to get downgraded to maybe mediocre-looking 720p HD.) It's because of this flexibility that AT&T TV can serve as a direct replacement for Uverse TV but also be a nationwide service that replaces DirecTV satellite for anyone with fast enough home internet.
Leaked internet screenshots from AT&T confirm what a local AT&T installer told me some time ago, which is that once AT&T TV becomes available in 9 pilot markets this month, Uverse TV will cease to be sold to new customers there. We can only assume that Uverse TV will cease to be sold anywhere at all once AT&T TV launches nationwide this fall. One person who claimed to work inside AT&T posted on a site awhile back that Uverse TV would continue to operate and be available to existing customers for a long time -- I think he said 4 years? -- after it ceases to be sold to new customers.
That sounds like an unnecessarily long phase-out period to me. I don't know why it couldn't be done in 18-24 months if AT&T began sending physical mail and email touting AT&T TV in Jan. 2020 to their Uverse TV customers. Spend six months enticing them to come over voluntarily, then in mid-2020, tell them that Uverse TV will shut down one year later. Spend that year offering special incentives to transition their account over to AT&T TV (switch today and score a $50 Visa gift card!). Come mid-2021, if there are still a lot of stragglers clinging to their Uverse remotes, give them an additional 3-6 months, taking drastic measures like a forced message that appears briefly on screen every time they turn the TV on ("TV service to this receiver will soon be discontinued. Call 1-800... to adjust your account and ensure that your TV service from AT&T is not disrupted."). Then once the deadline arrives, the receiver would do nothing when turned on but auto-play a pre-recorded message telling them how to switch to AT&T TV and showing how AT&T TV works with testimonials from former Uverse TV customers about how much better it is.
At any point during the Uverse TV phase-out period, I doubt that AT&T would even ask customers to take their receivers to a UPS Store for free return shipping. (This is how equipment always get turned back in to AT&T now.) Those old receivers are essentially worthless. Any recycling value they might have would be outweighed by the return shipping charges that AT&T would pay. To switch to AT&T TV, customers would simply need to opt in via phone, website or perhaps even using an interactive channel/app on the Uverse receiver by TV remote. The AT&T TV bo
Customer service lines would be ringing off the hook.
In order for AT&T TV to be a true UVerseTV replacement it would need to pause and rewind and liveTV. The DTV Now UI doesn’t pause and rewind live TV. Unless the C71KW with the DTV Ui can pause and rewind liveTV and the Apple TV and the RokuTV can’t? AT&T TV would also need to have the same 6 HD streams that UVerseTV has.
Also the same day new release BluRay movies are out they would be out on AT&T TV VOD. I know they could say use the a Google Play Store or use Amazon Prime but this way you could do the movie rental# with the AT&T Ui not back out of it and go to another APP. It could also give AT&T TV more revenue and do the new release movies in 4K.
Also the same day new release BluRay movies are out they would be out on AT&T TV VOD. I know they could say use the a Google Play Store or use Amazon Prime but this way you could do the movie rental# with the AT&T Ui not back out of it and go to another APP. It could also give AT&T TV more revenue and do the new release movies in 4K.
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Good point! I keep forgetting that IPTV takes up bandwidth. One of the reasons why they bought DTV to get UVerseTV off of their bandwidth. However, with IPTV if the Internet goes down you can still watch IPTV.
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There was nothing stopping them from doing MPEG4 prior to T16. What it brings is the ability to reach Puerto Rico (so they can retire 110) and Hawaii at full power (so they can use a Slimline instead of the AK/HI dish) and use the 6 transponders currently used for spot beams from 101 for CONUS broadcast.
MPEG4 is just a different way of organizing bits than MPEG2, the satellite transponders don't know or care whether the bits modulated into a RF waveform contain MPEG2, MPEG4 or chocolate chip cookie recipes in Welsh.
Their are two versions of IPTV. Managed and Unmanaged IPTV. Unmanaged IPTV is OTT.
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The latest Speedtest Global Index has us #7 in fixed broadband speed, and the countries in front of us are extremely small, based on area, for the size of the United States (I.E the area) we do extremely well if you ask me when it comes to speed. Much more work to be done in rural areas in particular, but considering the massive size of the country, I think we are doing quite well.
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Sorry, I think I kind of understand it. Managed IPTV is using AT&T TV’s own private network vs. the Internet. I guess that is the one part I don’t get if it uses its own private network why would it eat Internet bandwidth? Haven’t their been incidents where UverseTV would still work if the Internet went down? Or vice versa? However, I think DTV Now has gown but AT&T Internet would still work? I could be wrong on that.
Depends on what you mean by "internet goes down". If you can't ping past the other end of your DSL/fiber link then Uverse TV would be out too. If you can reach routers inside the Uverse/AT&T network but just not "the internet" outside AT&T then Uverse TV should work fine.
Most of the time people will decide "the internet is down" if they can't reach Google or CNN or other well known sites, but unless you check whether the router on the other end of your DSL/fiber link is reachable it may be a more localized issue.
Most of the time people will decide "the internet is down" if they can't reach Google or CNN or other well known sites, but unless you check whether the router on the other end of your DSL/fiber link is reachable it may be a more localized issue.
On the Modem/routers we use, I get from the sub, "Our Internet is down", then I ask them, did they look at the Modem, they usually say No, which doesn't help at all. Thats the first thing they should look at.
IF the lights have gone Red and stay that way ... Yes, your internet is down ...
Often times, they say, No, lights all stayed green ... thats when I look at the inside stuff as the Internet did not go down ( I show them that Internet still works) and its more than likely a Wifi issue.
Most think they are the same thing....
IF the lights have gone Red and stay that way ... Yes, your internet is down ...
Often times, they say, No, lights all stayed green ... thats when I look at the inside stuff as the Internet did not go down ( I show them that Internet still works) and its more than likely a Wifi issue.
Most think they are the same thing....
Because it's wasteful from a bandwidth perspective to continue using Uverse TV's H.264 codec when AT&T TV uses the much more efficient H.265. And when it comes to multicast streams for linear channels, surely AT&T TV embraces the more modern approach of dynamically switching between unicast and multicast based on the number of viewers demanding the channel at any given moment in order to optimize network resource management. Uverse TV can't do that; it's simply limited by outdated technology. Also, there are operational efficiencies (i.e. cost savings) to be had by standardizing on one platform. Lastly, AT&T TV is built to more fully exploit where the company is going with HBO Max and targeted advertising.
From the info that has leaked out, it strongly suggests to me that AT&T TV will use multicast video streams on linear channels (at least the most popular ones) for those customers on AT&T Internet/Fiber. Until Uverse TV is shut down in a given area, I suspect AT&T might use, if possible, the same H.264 multicast streams deployed for Uverse TV on AT&T TV too. Why run two different sets of multicast linear channels on the network unless for some reason it's technically necessary? (And, for all I know, maybe it is. Uverse TV is based on an outdated software platform called Ericsson Mediaroom, which began development at Microsoft back in 2000. I think Frontier may still be using that system for their Vantage TV product, which is still actively sold, and I know that it's still being used by the deprecated CenturyLink Prism TV service, which is not still being sold. Otherwise I'm not aware of any other MVPD in the country still using it besides Uverse TV.)[/QUOTE]
Phillip Swann article on would AT&T selling DTV to Dish. I asked him about the channel contract negotiation and he said that wouldn’t be an issue.
Will Dish & DIRECTV Merge? - The TV Answer Man!
Will Dish & DIRECTV Merge? - The TV Answer Man!
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