Went in fairly painlessly last week. My setup:
1. CAT-5 from NID to wiring cabinet in guest bedroom closet. (The builder did a great job pre-wiring the house.) I mounted a shelf at the wiring cabinet to hold the RG. There are CAT-5 homeruns from family room, master bedroom, and office to the RG in the closet.
2. DVR in family room, STB's in master bedroom & office. I also have CAT-5 feeding a switch in the office to feed both PC's there. I took out my Linksys and am using the wireless on the RG to take care of the laptop downstairs.
3. Installation took about two hours.
Thoughts:
1. Standard definition blows D* away. HD is comparable to what I got over the air. I have seen the occasional blocking, but it resolves itself within a second. I'm happy with the picture quality. It's an improvement over what I had with D*.
2. We only have one HDTV in the house, so having only one HD stream only presents a problem when DVR'ing one HD show and trying to watch another show in HD. We do have the option of switching over to the OTA antenna to watch something local. However, I'm looking forward to them loosening that bottleneck.
3. We had a thunderstorm blip the power the first night, and I learned firsthand that the RG has to boot up before the STB's do. I had to call support that evening to get the line reset before the RG would fully boot up. The wait for a technician at 10:30 on a Sunday night was no more than a minute and the tech knew what she was doing. I bought a UPS the next day for the RG. We haven't had problems since, despite thunderstorms every day down here.
4. The U-Verse supplied remote control will turn my Harman/Kardon home theatre receiver off, but not on. We're back to using the Logitech Harmony in the living room (see below) so that's not a huge deal. If you have an older model H/K receiver, you might run into the same thing.
5. My Logitech Harmony remote needed a firmware upgrade before it would control the Motorola DVR. (Newer Harmony remotes should work fine. I had to move from v2.x to v7.x to be able to send the right IR frequency to the Motorola box.) I had to be bumped to tier 3 support at Logitech to get this resolved, but I was happy that they had free phone support for a remote that's at least 4 years old.
6. The U-Verse supplied remote control won't talk to my off-brand TV set in the office. For the amount of time we'll spend watching TV in that room, we'll just use two remotes. It's not worth raising a fuss over a $50 cheap Chinese TV.
7. The DVR isn't TiVo, but it's easier to use than the new D* one. I've already used the web-remote control twice. The on-screen guide sometimes takes a second or two to pop up or react, which is similar to the D* R-15.
Overall, we're happy with the service. We're keeping it.
1. CAT-5 from NID to wiring cabinet in guest bedroom closet. (The builder did a great job pre-wiring the house.) I mounted a shelf at the wiring cabinet to hold the RG. There are CAT-5 homeruns from family room, master bedroom, and office to the RG in the closet.
2. DVR in family room, STB's in master bedroom & office. I also have CAT-5 feeding a switch in the office to feed both PC's there. I took out my Linksys and am using the wireless on the RG to take care of the laptop downstairs.
3. Installation took about two hours.
Thoughts:
1. Standard definition blows D* away. HD is comparable to what I got over the air. I have seen the occasional blocking, but it resolves itself within a second. I'm happy with the picture quality. It's an improvement over what I had with D*.
2. We only have one HDTV in the house, so having only one HD stream only presents a problem when DVR'ing one HD show and trying to watch another show in HD. We do have the option of switching over to the OTA antenna to watch something local. However, I'm looking forward to them loosening that bottleneck.
3. We had a thunderstorm blip the power the first night, and I learned firsthand that the RG has to boot up before the STB's do. I had to call support that evening to get the line reset before the RG would fully boot up. The wait for a technician at 10:30 on a Sunday night was no more than a minute and the tech knew what she was doing. I bought a UPS the next day for the RG. We haven't had problems since, despite thunderstorms every day down here.
4. The U-Verse supplied remote control will turn my Harman/Kardon home theatre receiver off, but not on. We're back to using the Logitech Harmony in the living room (see below) so that's not a huge deal. If you have an older model H/K receiver, you might run into the same thing.
5. My Logitech Harmony remote needed a firmware upgrade before it would control the Motorola DVR. (Newer Harmony remotes should work fine. I had to move from v2.x to v7.x to be able to send the right IR frequency to the Motorola box.) I had to be bumped to tier 3 support at Logitech to get this resolved, but I was happy that they had free phone support for a remote that's at least 4 years old.
6. The U-Verse supplied remote control won't talk to my off-brand TV set in the office. For the amount of time we'll spend watching TV in that room, we'll just use two remotes. It's not worth raising a fuss over a $50 cheap Chinese TV.
7. The DVR isn't TiVo, but it's easier to use than the new D* one. I've already used the web-remote control twice. The on-screen guide sometimes takes a second or two to pop up or react, which is similar to the D* R-15.
Overall, we're happy with the service. We're keeping it.
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