Major DIRECTV Rumor Alerts

[goaliebob99]

I seriously doubt AT&T will be deploying FTTP/FTTH to their entire footprint, they will more than likely deploy it only in areas where they know darn sure that they will be getting a return on their investment. If you have read any of the articles written by Karl Bode over at DSLReports.com you would know that AT&T really has no interest in pushing fiber to every one of their customers. The well-to-do neighborhoods, yes most definitely will get FTTP but older areas will be puttering along at speeds far less than a Gigabit and more than likely be slaves to the cable companies.

Don't let AT&T fool you. This is nothing but what Karl refers to as a FTTPR or Fiber To The Press Release.

I totally get this part. That's where the wireless product will come in and the gigbit over wireless that they are trialing. While shareholders may not allow it (Fiber deployment to entire footprint), they may have no option as the FCC has already stated they want everyone to have fiber in replace of the old copper system that Verizon and ATT keeps on degrading. Plus a fiber system has low maintenance costs once it's in. Outside of a cut fiber, once it's in, there is no costs to maintain it. The initial cost is upfront installation, and even that is coming down to responsible levels to make rural fiber deployment possible. I currently pay 100 for gigabit fiber and no cap. I think this will become more of the norm. What I see happening is peering agreements between providers that will allow this traffic to go through without any restriction, in exchange for backbone peering agreements.

While people say no way it will never happen, I think that we are a lot closer than many of you think. In areas that fiber isn't plausible, we may see a more wireless trend via gigbit wireless. Via Wifi / LTE 5G. Both specs have chipsets developed and are getting ready to deploy. ATT would love to have a gigbit wireless presence that they could ditch their copper uverse service for in areas they dont have fiber deployed, and this maybe reality 5 years from now.

 

[Jimbo]

Yes, I actually had uVerse TV. Just a short while ago I had it. I dropped them about three weeks ago. And yes, the TV picture quality was really that bad.

Let's face facts here. Most video encoding experts say that a properly encoded HDTV feed requires at the very least 8 Mbps using MPEG4 h.264 to maintain decent picture quality; preferably 9 to 10 Mbps to deliver superb picture quality. And here's AT&T encoding at 5.7 Mbps for their uVerse TV product. Absolutely pathetic. It's no wonder why AT&T uVerse TV picture quality looks like absolute crap. They pretty much have to encode at such a low (and pathetic) rate because of the bandwidth constraints of their copper VDSL lines.

I was watching Marvel's Agents of Shield and that new Gotham show (both of which have dark scenes in them especially Gotham in when they're in the police station) and I was blown away when I saw it for the first time on DirecTV. Why? Because I could, for the first time, see details in the dark backgrounds that I never saw on uVerse TV. I saw various shades of gray and blacks that I never saw before. On uVerse TV all of the background scenes in which there were dark colors were a complete muddy mess. It was like the encoder ran out of bits to represent the background colors that required complex shades of color. And then there's my local news broadcasts in which when the weather report comes on with the radar picture. On uVerse TV you could see major macroblocking when the radar picture moved. And then there's the national ABC News broadcast in which on DirecTV I could see the pinstripe detail of David Muir's suit; never saw that on uVerse TV in which it just shows it as a detail-less gray.

So yes, DirecTV is in fact superior to uVerse TV! I have compared the two, side by side, and DirecTV wins. It's no contest!

There's another forum I hang out in over at DSLReports.com where there's a number of uVerse Premise Technicians that hang out. They help out where they can and give advice to people who have line and service issues. A number of them have been talking about the fact that they will be getting DirecTV installation training in the very near future. Some of them have already had said training.

It's been said elsewhere that uVerse TV is losing money for AT&T and that that's another reason why AT&T bought DirecTV, to help bring in more subscribers (and the clout that comes with it) to be able to tell the network providers where to shove their rate increases.

As for the state of the uVerse copper plant, it's horrible. I have heard enough horror stories from people who have tried to get uVerse service (any service, even just Internet service) to be able to write a book on the subject. I'm sure that the Premise Technicians that hang out over at DSLReports.com could expand that book to a trilogy. The issue is that in a lot of places the copper plant is in such complete and total disrepair that uVerse hardly works in those areas. Everything from bad splices to bad grounds to water in the lines to animal activity that's turned the cables to junk. And let's not forget that as you add more uVerse subscribers to an area you introduce more noise to the F2 cable bundle (that's that line on the pole or buried in the ground) so your SNR numbers take a crap. Yes, I know, there's rumors that AT&T will be turning up something called VDSL Vectoring some time in the future that promises to help increase SNR numbers on marginal lines and where there's lots of uVerse subscribers but like many Premise Technicians have said, I'll believe it when I see it.

Keep in mind I have NEVER said that u verse had a better picture than D*.

My question is Did you ever have att out to correct your issues ?

How far was your loop length ?

This has a lot to do with U Verse picture quality .
Did they ever provision your line ?

 

[Jimbo]

In the end I believe that AT&T will have to make one of two choices...

1. Deploy FTTH/FTTP to their entire footprint and face the wrath of the investors on Wall Street that couldn't find their ass with both hands tied behind their back.
   
2. Face a future in which they're not going to be relevant in the wireline market as the cable TV companies continue to devour the home wireline Internet market and become the defacto Internet monopoly in 95% of the US market.

It's bad enough that scenario number 2 is well on the way to becoming what we're going to see in the future.

INteresting, they've already addressed both these issue ... does it have to be done over and over to make you happy ?

 

[Jimbo]

I totally get this part. That's where the wireless product will come in and the gigbit over wireless that they are trialing. While shareholders may not allow it (Fiber deployment to entire footprint), they may have no option as the FCC has already stated they want everyone to have fiber in replace of the old copper system that Verizon and ATT keeps on degrading. Plus a fiber system has low maintenance costs once it's in. Outside of a cut fiber, once it's in, there is no costs to maintain it. The initial cost is upfront installation, and even that is coming down to responsible levels to make rural fiber deployment possible. I currently pay 100 for gigabit fiber and no cap. I think this will become more of the norm. What I see happening is peering agreements between providers that will allow this traffic to go through without any restriction, in exchange for backbone peering agreements.

While people say no way it will never happen, I think that we are a lot closer than many of you think. In areas that fiber isn't plausible, we may see a more wireless trend via gigbit wireless. Via Wifi / LTE 5G. Both specs have chipsets developed and are getting ready to deploy. ATT would love to have a gigbit wireless presence that they could ditch their copper uverse service for in areas they dont have fiber deployed, and this maybe reality 5 years from now.

Att will be going that wireless route, it's already being worked on.

 

[trparky]

AT&T would love to have a Gigabit wireless presence that they could ditch their copper uVerse service for in areas they don't have fiber deployed, and this maybe reality 5 years from now.

Great... so we can all look a future in which we can hit our wireless cap in ten seconds.

 

[trparky]

Keep in mind I have NEVER said that u verse had a better picture than D*.

My question is Did you ever have att out to correct your issues ?

How far was your loop length ?

This has a lot to do with U Verse picture quality .
Did they ever provision your line ?

I practically have the VRAD as my next door neighbor. Hell, I can practically throw a baseball at it from my front door step. I have 45 Mbps from them right now with a bonded line setup with line stats that would make 95% of uVerse subscribers jealous. My loop length is less than 800 feet according to the last uVerse technician. Here are my stats...


As for loop lengths it shouldn't effect picture quality all that much unless your modem is showing some serious amounts of FECs on the downstream channel.

 

[Jimbo]

I practically have the VRAD as my next door neighbor. Hell, I can practically throw a baseball at it from my front door step. I have 45 Mbps from them right now with a bonded line setup with line stats that would make 95% of uVerse subscribers jealous. My loop length is less than 800 feet according to the last uVerse technician. Here are my stats...
View attachment 111409

As for loop lengths it shouldn't effect picture quality all that much unless your modem is showing some serious amounts of FECs on the downstream channel.

A very small bridge tap will cause major issues.
Being only 800 ft you probably don't have Bridge tap left on the line unless it's a very short cable run.
I'd have to see your Cable print for the neighborhood to tell for sure.
Also, often times when your this close, you have too much power and that can also cause issues, sometime they will put a filter on it to add wire.

As you can see there are a ton of variables with U Verse.

 

[HoTat2]

Note the terminology.. LIKE. Does that mean the current gen2 dswm lnb floating on eBay can do 22 tuners as well?

Yeah, there's some confusion here ...

From Scott's tech. document excerpt that Slimline-3D2 LNB (P/N 3D2LNBR0-02) should have a 22 tuner limit as a 2nd gen. DSWM or "DSWM2."

Therefore the Reverse Band models should have the same 22 tuner limit, the Slimline-3DR and -5DR, as they are listed as 2nd gen. DSWM LNBs as well (Don't have their P/Ns yet. Perhaps will be "3DRLNBR0-02" and "5DRLNBR0-02?").

Anyhow, all references to the Slimline-3D2 on eBay as well as according to a technician who first published photos of it on dbstalk.com (his supervisor said) has it as the same 13 tuner limit as the 1st gen. model the Slimline-3DS (P/N 3D1LNBR0-01).

Sent from my SGH-M819N using Tapatalk

 

[trparky]

Line conditions shouldn't change the quality of the picture that you're receiving on uVerse TV unless your modem is registered CRC Errors. There are two types of data errors on uVerse; FEC and CRC. FEC errors are errors in the data transmission that the modem was able to recover using a method known as Forward Error Correction. If you have a couple, even 100 in a minute of time, it will not result in data loss and won't cause issues with TV. CRC errors are totally different, these kinds of errors are errors that the modem wasn't able to correct and will result in TV data transmission issues that can manifest itself as either a complete pause of the TV and/or severe macroblocking.

Like I said before, the issues that uVerse TV stems from the fact that they allocate such as small amount of bandwidth to their MPEG4 h.264 data streams for HDTV. The 5.7 Mbps that they allocate simply isn't enough to properly represent HDTV and any encoding expert will agree with that statement. Most encoding experts agree that 8 Mbps is the minimum required bandwidth for a decent HDTV picture, preferably 9 to 10 Mbps. DirecTV doesn't have such bandwidth limitations and so they can allocate more bandwidth to their HDTV feeds to properly encode an HDTV feed.

In many circles DirecTV is known as the Gold Standard by which all other pay TV providers are measured up against and more often than not, fail. More HDTV purists choose DirecTV for their broadcast needs when it comes to cable channels.

 

[Chuck W]

The new term will be macro-blocking..Once Comcast and other providers slow down your connection because you have used your allotment of bandwidth

They wont slow you down, you will just get hit with overage charges. That will put a damper on a lot of this type thing for many, unless the FCC steps in and puts their foot down on the money grabs... aka caps.

 

[Jimbo]

Wow,
This thread has gone Way off topic ....
The topic had nothing to do with bickering over speeds and what is required for 4k.

 

[HoTat2]

Wow,
This thread has gone Way off topic ....
The topic had nothing to do with bickering over speeds and what is required for 4k.

Yeah. ..

The part about a fail-over feature to IPTV via the Internet in the event the satellite link goes out in the rumored future DIRECTV/AT&T receiver caused the thread to go off track into a debate over internet connection types, speeds, and other related technology and policies.

Sent from my SGH-M819N using Tapatalk

 

[Poke]

As long as it works with AT&T 6.0 Fast DSL.

You will probably need U-verse Internet instead of their basic DSL if you want better results due to U-verse Internet offers faster speeds but is not available in every area.

 

[Poke]

I don't see giving the customer a box to hook up at home with their existing Internet will be much of a success...

#1 since your getting Tv only from AT&T you likely will be waiting for your internet to get hooked up.

#2 people won't be able to set it up.

#3 existing AT&T Internet will be too slow

#4 you will be amazed how many satellite customers don't have Internet.

I sell Vonage and it's amazing how many idiots I deal with that can't hook it up themselves. And that's giving the customer a free cordless phone kit so they don't have to do any wiring.

Existing Internet will depend on where you live if you have U verse internet it's more than fast enough but their basic DSL is only 6 Meg in most areas.

 

[Poke]

In the end I believe that AT&T will have to make one of two choices...

1. Deploy FTTH/FTTP to their entire footprint and face the wrath of the investors on Wall Street that couldn't find their ass with both hands tied behind their back.
   
2. Face a future in which they're not going to be relevant in the wireline market as the cable TV companies continue to devour the home wireline Internet market and become the defacto Internet monopoly in 95% of the US market.

It's bad enough that scenario number 2 is well on the way to becoming what we're going to see in the future.

Yeah it would be if they would do FTH it would be a lot more reliable for sure and offer faster speeds I know the cost is more but in the long run it's a win win for everyone. It's funny to see all of them react when Google Fiber announces they are coming to a particular location due to then AT&T comes back with their Gigabit Power campaigns.

 

[Bodo Fenrirsson]

You will probably need U-verse Internet instead of their basic DSL if you want better results due to U-verse Internet offers faster speeds but is not available in every area.

I will NEVER see AT&T Uverse in my lifetime or the lifetimes of my children & grandchildren where I live. It'll pop up all around my city,but it will NEVER cross my city limits INTO my city. So 6.0 Fast DSL is the best I'll ever get until AT&T shuts that down(& replaces it with heavily capped wireless broadband).

 

[trparky]

Yeah it would be if they would do FTH it would be a lot more reliable for sure and offer faster speeds I know the cost is more but in the long run it's a win win for everyone. It's funny to see all of them react when Google Fiber announces they are coming to a particular location due to then AT&T comes back with their Gigabit Power campaigns.

It's a wonder what true competition does. It tends to light a fire under the ass of the sleeping giant.

 

[Jimbo]

It's a wonder what true competition does. It tends to light a fire under the ass of the sleeping giant.

And what about the rest of the Internet Providers ?
ATT is hardly the only ones that doesn't do over 100.

 

[twizt3dsist3r]

So back on topic, an answer to the 13 vs 22 tuner limit, although again this is a rumor and speculation, but i am told the lnb is firmware upgradeable. Mine has 13 tuners now but my aim meter cant read it to run tests. No further comments at this time.

Sent from my K013 using Tapatalk

 

[Jimbo]

Existing Internet will depend on where you live if you have U verse internet it's more than fast enough but their basic DSL is only 6 Meg in most areas.

FYI, anything over 6 mg requires the newer U Verse equipment, that said, that same box will do anywhere from 1.5 and up where as the older modems will only handle up to 6.