Dish to UVerse?

[kluken]

Been with Dish for 7 years and fairly happy. Am frustrated mostly with their packages, but also having issues with OTA and 2 SAT DVR recording. The OTA works good most of the time, but becasue of my location I get some intermittent issues, then this year all the frequent heavy storms seemed to happen in the middle of shows I was recording thus lost big chucks. AThen with all the nickel and dimiing Dish really is not that much cheaper than UVErse and with the bundles I am putting to ther with wireless it looks like I can get better TV packages without increasing my overall spend (wirelss, TV, Internet). Question is how does UVerse compare to Dish. I know UVerse had issues early on, but the ability to record 3 HD streams and the multiview looks very appealing. Wondering if anyone when from Dish to Uverse and back can share why, or maybe new Dish users that left UVerse. How is the pic quality compared to Dish? Is it really relaible? How is the UVerse DVR compared to a 722? Looking for any and all constructive advice!

Thanks!

 

[rocket69]

Uvers is great when it works and is still in its infancy. My mother jumped when the new $17 DVR not a DVR fee came in to play.

Over all its great but each user and location is not the same due to limitasions on how far from distro box and other unknown factors even to the u-vers tecs. The HD streems will only be 1-4 depending on how far you are also your internet speed slows down when your watching tv. With my little sisters still in the house they tend to blow up the recorder and some times it will only alow those recording and no other live feeds as it reach its max. The guide is nice and smoth if noting other then tv is going on the network. When DL or uploading large files the guide is slow and takes 20-40 sec to move up or down and "HD" is now SD.

 

[lakebum431]

I did that for a month (I actually never dropped dish, just added uverse to try it out when I had the Uverse internet added). Their DVR sucked! It was slow and clunky. At that time (about 2 years ago) I could only record 2 HD streams in my area. I know that has been upgraded in some areas now. It is worth a shot to try, but I wouldn't cancel dish until you are sure as I bet you'll come running back to the far superior Dish DVRs.

 

[3HaloODST]

I switched to U-verse for about 7 months and it was the worst 7 months of TV I've ever experienced. Where do I start? First off, I could only view 2 HD at a time, could only view 4 live channels at a time period. Sure nowadays you can record 3HD, as long as you live next to a VRAD and only have 1 or 2 TVs. Otherwise, you're gonna have to give up some recording slots for the other TVs.

Their DVR is so terrible that there is a recording limit of 203 recordings, regardless of whether or not you actually fill up the tiny 320GB drive. The whole "Total Home DVR" thing is pretty crap because that means you have to share recording space with every other TV in the house. Also, if you're recording a lot, the DVR struggles to play back smoothly on the remote set top boxes and they will freeze. All of the STB menus are painfully slow compared to DISH as well. I absolutely hated how watching TV would take my 24Mbps Internet down to 9-18Mbps...

The HD picture quality is also HORRIBLE. YouTube HD looks better a lot of the time. Another thing about U-verse, say you have 3 TVs watching live TV, and you have 2 recordings scheduled to fire shortly. Well, as soon as those 2 recordings fire, 1 of those 3 TVs is going to be BOOTED off of TV due to the 4-channel live TV limit. You can't even determine which one. I HATED that. Can you imagine, watching TV, only to see a black screen stating "All TV services in use" just because someone in the other room scheduled a recording?

So I switched back to DISH and now I can record 8 HD while still having 24Mbps (soon to be 60Mbps) Internet, can archive my DVR recordings to external hard drives, MUCH better HD, fast 722ks, and at a better price. I can't even begin to tell you how relieved I was when I finally dropped U-verse TV.

 

[Yespage]

Couple things. Check out the Latino packages and see if one of those would work for you. It is a good way of cutting some fat off the programming part of the bill.

Second, I'd recommend going to DSL Reports because they may have decent local reviews for U-VERSE in your area.

 

[CK SatGuy]

So I switched back to DISH and now I can record 8 HD while still having 24Mbps (soon to be 60Mbps) Internet, can archive my DVR recordings to external hard drives, MUCH better HD, fast 722ks, and at a better price. I can't even begin to tell you how relieved I was when I finally dropped U-verse TV.

Wonder how much that would cost? $100/month maybe? Seriously though, I did look into U-verse a couple of times but I never made the switch because their prices are just too much compared to what I'm paying with Dish now.

 

[empiretc]

3 friends did it, all 3 changed back

 

[thedamaja]

I currently have Uverse and have no complaints except for the HD picture quality, which is why I will be dumping the video portion. I figured i would have this issue going in and primary just got it installed to have a 2nd internet option (other than comcast).

I have the whole home dvr with 2 additional receivers. Only 2 of us in the house so the 3 HD stream limit hasn't been an issue. I also do not archive programs so the smallish dvr hasn't impacted me either. The hardware itself works fine and the receivers are very small. Never had an issue with lock ups or anything like that, channel changes are super fast.

The HD Quality is very hit or miss, sometimes sports look fine but more often than not they are bad. Any program with fast motion or alot of explosions, contrast changes, ect... look horrible. For reference I have 2 40" 1080P tv's and one 32" 720P all look equally bad. I've even seen blurring on sitcoms.

In the end it was still worth trying, they gave me over $200 in rebates and I now have a stand alone high speed internet option that's cheaper than Comcast. Note that the top upload speed on Uverse internet is 1.5mb which could be an issue for some.

 

[LER]

why would you go to a provider that has less HD streams available if you have multiple tv's?

I have U-Verse for internet and phone, but will NEVER get their TV package due to the 4 stream limit. I have 3 HD TV's, and 3 722K's with OTA adapters. So I have 12 HD streams.

There is no way that 4 streams will suffice.

 

[3HaloODST]

Wonder how much that would cost? $100/month maybe? Seriously though, I did look into U-verse a couple of times but I never made the switch because their prices are just too much compared to what I'm paying with Dish now.

$65 for 24Mbps U-verse, about $85 for 60Mbps Charter cable.

 

[CK SatGuy]

$65 for 24Mbps U-verse, about $85 for 60Mbps Charter cable.

Eh, I was close.

 

[JM42]

Had it for a a little over a month - primarily to pick up the free install for the internet portion. Bottom line stayed with Dish for TV. It didn't suck, but PQ was generally worse and DVR functionality just seemed kludgy by comparison. Whole home DVR was nice, but not nearly enough to stay with them.

I actually ended up making money the first couple of months. Between the promotions and the credit they gave me the first time I tried cancelling the TV portion it fully covered the install and first couple months of service.

Also you mentioned OTA - I don't think there is an OTA option for Uverse (but I didn't check that out specifically).

 

[Paradox-SJ]

Several of the guys I work with have or have had it over the past year and they ALL hated it.

 

[3HaloODST]

Eh, I was close.

Well worth it IMO .

Also you mentioned OTA - I don't think there is an OTA option for Uverse (but I didn't check that out specifically).

Nope.