Just switched from U-verse - Initial thoughts

[definitelyian]

Hey all-

I just purchased my first place and the building I bought in has an exclusive contract with Directv. I had U-verse in my previous apartment and just thought I'd share my thoughts on the switch.

Directv advantages:

I absolutely love the picture and sound quality with D*. It's, without a doubt, much better than U-verse. I have yet to see any pixelation and there are no more audio blips in my surround sound. I find the DVR to be a little more responsive than the U-verse DVR. I also like that you don't have to go to a separate set of channels to get HD programming. The iPad app is fantastic and I love the ability to control the DVR.

Things I miss about U-verse:

While the picture quality was on a lower level, U-verse does have a better overall selection of HD channels. It was nice to get AMC HD, DIY HD and countless others I don't have with D*. I also miss how logically the U-verse channels were grouped. I can't stand how D* has the various channels scattered all over with crap shopping channels sandwiched right in. I also miss the ability to browse the Ondemand library from rooms boxes other than the DVR.

Overall I'm happy with D*, I just wish the HD lineup would fill out a little bit and D* would reorganize the channels into more logical layout.

 

[tvropro]

How is Uverse's SD picture quality compared to Direct. I heard it is better. I never seen it. Just curious?

 

[jcrandall]

I think about any carrier would have better SD than Directv. That 101 satellite is so full that they are compressing everything a ton, SD looks terrible on DirecTV compared to almost any other carrier. Uncompressed SD can look pretty decent, not HD, but not the crap that Directv shows on the SD channels.

 

[definitelyian]

How is Uverse's SD picture quality compared to Direct. I heard it is better. I never seen it. Just curious?

The SD quality is definitely better. I feel it's less blurry. They also have a much better variety of SD channels.

 

[cypherstream]

UVerse sends their HD in around 5 to 6 mbps per channel whereas DirecTV sends theirs around 10 mbps per channel. Both are using H.264 MPEG4/AVC, so it is an apples to apples comparison (ie were not comparing different codecs).

I think DirecTV could get away with 8 mbps per channel... still around 3 mbps better than UVerse, and 3mbps goes a long way in H.264, especially when statistically multiplexing a good selection of various services. If DirecTV did this with the latest generation encoders, I don't think no one would notice a quality difference, and bandwidth would be saved to add new HD like DIY, AMC, E!, Style, BBCA, We, TruTV, ID, HistInt'l, Sprout, TheHub, QVC, HSN, GSN, GMC, TCM, Ovation, Reelz, and many more.

 

[tvropro]

Direct has made a business decision to save money. This is why HD updates are trickling in. Also they don't want to upgrade there encoders cause thats cash too. At least there not choking off the sub par bandwidth rates as bad as Dish is to add fluff HD.

 

[GailLA]

Just a suggestion. You can't change the channel groupings, but you can get rid of the crap shopping channels by using the favorites list. It takes a little work, but I only see the channels I want to see in the guide.