SageTV vs ATT Uverse?

[RonGee]

Hi,
I'm completely new to all this, having just started reading about media center type applications. I just read an announcement that ATT Uverse will have whole house DVR available shortly, and already has it on the West Coast. With that in mind, I'm wondering if Uverse Whole House DVR is a competitor of SageTV, or a complement to SageTV, or what?

BTW,I'm currently running Dish Network with one dual receiver DVR unit, and 2separate non-DVR receivers, hooked up to multiple TVs.

Thanks for any thoughts you might have.

Ron

[stanger89]

Originally Posted by RonGee

Hi,
I'm completely new to all this, having just started reading about media center type applications. I just read an announcement that ATT Uverse will have whole house DVR available shortly, and already has it on the West Coast. With that in mind, I'm wondering if Uverse Whole House DVR is a competitor of SageTV, or a complement to SageTV, or what?

Sorta, sorta not. On the one hand, it finally brings multi-room DVR to the rest of the world. But on the other it doesn't have anywhere near the features or extensibility Sage has.

I guess I'd look at it as opening the whole-house DVR market to a wider audience than being a direct competitor to Sage.

And don't forget, you have to actually be able to get Uverse to use it.

[shadeblue.com]

Originally Posted by RonGee

Hi,
I'm completely new to all this, having just started reading about media center type applications. I just read an announcement that ATT Uverse will have whole house DVR available shortly, and already has it on the West Coast. With that in mind, I'm wondering if Uverse Whole House DVR is a competitor of SageTV, or a complement to SageTV, or what?

BTW,I'm currently running Dish Network with one dual receiver DVR unit, and 2separate non-DVR receivers, hooked up to multiple TVs.

Thanks for any thoughts you might have.

Ron

Hi Ron,

The ATT Uverse solution does provide a nice offering to the general public. And it is about time that a service content provider is finally providing a whole home DVR solution, c'mon its freaking 2008, I was able to do this back in 2002 with my ReplayTV. While I am sure that ATT will roll out Whole-Home-DVR very soon, they have been promising that feature for over a year. I waited a long time for ATT to add that feature with several missed deadlines. I decided to give up on ATT and build my own SageTV system, I could not be happier. The UVerse STBs are very basic with very few advanced options/configurations. I think it is good DVR solution for the average user, but not for an advanced user.

[mikejaner]

Verizon Fios has been doing this for two years. I almost got it, but found out it only supports SD when sending shows to the "dumb boxes" in your house, so you have to watch your HD content where your DVR is. They promised me two years ago they would be adding HD to the whole home DVR solution in "a few months", and I promised them, I would use it when they did. It would be a good backup to SageTV.

[CollinR]

1. Only TV no other media
2. Only 1 provider, you can't use foreign sat services with it
3. Limited tuners unlike sage you can't have 5,10,15 sources going


I think it's a mass solution that encompasses only one of SageTVs features/aspects. So although I see it as competition it's far more limited.

[RonGee]

Thanks, folks for all of the replies. I've decided to build myself a SageTV network on top of my existing PC network. ATT Uverse is available in my area, and they just announced availability of the whole house DVR as well, but from what I've read on other forums, it's quirky and not real solid at this point. Sage sounds like the best alternative at this point, and that's what I'm going to be doing.

Thanks again.

Ron

[stevech]

AT&T spent 2 days x 2 men rewiring my neighbor's house for U-Verse TV, Internet, Phone. Ripping out cable TV, and so on. Installing boxes, running new coax and ethernet cables all 'round.

When they connected all this to the little twisted-pair phone wires from the street, wa-la! No workie. Just a bit too far to the AT&T U-Verse box. Short distance as the crow flies; but this isn't the route the underground phone wires take.

AT&T abandoned the job. Homeowner had to beg TimeWarner to reinstate Cable TV/Modem. For a price.

Then my neighbor received a bill for installation and services from AT&T.

How typical of the New AT&T.

[shadeblue.com]

Originally Posted by stevech

AT&T spent 2 days x 2 men rewiring my neighbor's house for U-Verse TV, Internet, Phone. Ripping out cable TV, and so on. Installing boxes, running new coax and ethernet cables all 'round.

When they connected all this to the little twisted-pair phone wires from the street, wa-la! No workie. Just a bit too far to the AT&T U-Verse box. Short distance as the crow flies; but this isn't the route the underground phone wires take.

AT&T abandoned the job. Homeowner had to beg TimeWarner to reinstate Cable TV/Modem. For a price.

Then my neighbor received a bill for installation and services from AT&T.

How typical of the New AT&T.

Well, that sounds just terrible. During my installation the AT&T technician used sophisticated test equipment to ensure the signal was strong enough for the service to work. If the signal is dodgy, then they reject the site. In the locations where Uverse is newer and in high demand for new installs, AT&T does use contractors to do the initial installations, and my guess is that they do not have the proper test equipment or training to properly certify sites for installation. I have also heard and read numerous stories about bad quality of service and poor HD video quality, but I guess I have been lucky, my service has been very stable and reliable. I do have a 1080i LCD TV and I cannot discern any HD quality degradation between UVerse and TW Cable HD. I installed all CAT-5E runs for the UVerse STBs prior to the install date, I did not want to chance it with the installers attempting a coax or single copper pair solution.

[stevech]

yes, AT&T is doing a no-tact brute force nationwide blitz on installs. So they get a majority of dolts and poorly trained field guys.

The billing fiasco I spoke of is so-AT&T. I and most of us have been abused by the "New" (SBC) AT&T.

The bottom line on U-verse is that it's an imprudent, short-term focused attempt to get into the TV business. Jamming that much bandwidth on a humble copper pair intended for 4KHz voice is just stupid.

[Serra]

I just got the AT&T U-verse install last week. My interest was strictly to get rid of Comcast Broadband & Cable, which has been no end of trouble for me. I have the 8Mb service and rarely get more than 2.8Mb down and 684Kb up. I don't use the cable, but was required to keep it by Comcast to get the broadband. (The rate without cable was about $4.00 a month higher)


The first install team showed up with their test equipment to make sure the signal strength on the box was good enough, which it wasn't, so they installed a new line in the yard up to the house. That line appeared good, so they departed.

The second install team showed up and started going over install options with me, their first choices was to remove all my Comcast stuff and replace it with AT&T. (I'm guess that would leave me stuck with AT&T with no easy way to go back to Comcast... well not me, but an average customer). I told them to leave the Comcast stuff functional and install their parallel. They ran a new cat-5e from the box into the house. At this point, they were clueless on how to use my existing cat-5 and network. After I explained how the install should work, they still didn't get it, so I just had them put in the box and I 'helped' them with the rest of the install. I'm fairly sure if I had not been there and it was my wife home instead, I would have ended up with a total mess. They weren't totally clueless, but they were not really knowledge about about networking and they may be able to setup an new network, but not integrate an existing one.

On the plus side, they did not touch my PCs. They had me agree to some stuff and setup an account, but no software installs. (Unlike Comcast)


In the end, I ended up with 10Mb Internet and one DVR. Internet works great, with one small exception. Their router doesn't allow me to set the DNS servers, so I'm stuck with AT&T instead of OpenDNS. Not that big of a deal, but not optimal. I could install OpenDNS on a per PC setup, if I desired.

The DVR is nice, it can record 4 shows at once, but is not nearly as functional as SageTV. I'm also told that the AT&T box does not do whole house steaming at this point. (I only have one to try it out, so I can't even test that).

If I were forced to abandon SageTV for some reason, I'd prefer the AT&T U-verse over the DirecTV DVR option because of the 4 channel vs 2 channel records. The DVR isn't nearly as functional as a ReplayTV or Tivo, but has the same functions as DirecTV's DVR, plus some VOD functions, which seem to be mostly free crap and $4.00-$6.00 rentals.

Edit: I just wanted to add that the U-verse solution is far better than Directv in that there is no need to run RG-6 or two RG-6 to every box. Any spot in the house can be supported with one CAT-5 run. The RG-6 run was one of the limitations that took me in the direction of Sage in the first place.

1. Only TV no other media
2. Only 1 provider, you can't use foreign sat services with it
3. Limited tuners unlike sage you can't have 5,10,15 sources going

1. Not true, they do support images via flickr.
2. No antenna either, though with 4 channel records, not really an issue.
3. 4 tuners, which is limited, but if someone wants 5 tuners I suspect the whole AT&T box is too small to support their viewing habits.

SageTV and AT&T are really for different users though. I'd say that AT&T fits far more users than SageTV. For those who prefer SageTV over AT&T, AT&T isn't really an alternative and visa versa.

[gibsonpa]

Plus 3 on the "new" att billing horror stories. They never could get my simple phone bill correct....can't image having them for any other service.

Pretty sad, as I worked for them for 10 years...up until 2006. That place went down hill so bad the last few year it was unbelievable. Probably depends on what department you work in, but the IT departments were horrible. It is no surprise the bills are so messed up...after seeing some of the billing software they "depend" on.

Sage is GREAT!!

[OldPCGUY]

OKay here are my key points

1. OTA Digital Channel in English for free ~40 in Oakland Area with two orthogonal antennas (network channels are HD with 5.1 Sound)
2. DISH Turbo HD Bronze for $25/Month (about 27 Watchable HD Channels)
3. AT&T Express DSL $25/Month
4. VOIP service $16.00/month (hey dad no taxes!)

A similar solution for all of the above with Comcast was $160/month but I did have 100 music channels that I never listened to and a ton of movie channels we never watched. It turns out most of our recordings with Sage were on Network Channels, USA, TBS, TNT, SCIFI, PBS. Comcast makes you rent horrible DVR's or thier crappy HD receiver.

Comcast raises their rates every year!!!!!!!
I suspect the UVERSE solition will be just as bad.

Talking with other satelite subscribers like Direct TV and Dish I hear that the bills have not gone up in several years. No taxes on DISH!!!!!!

I can integrate DISH and OTA in one program menu with Sage and buy extenders for a whole house solution. Notice buy versus rent.

And the Dish 612 DVR could do the same also. The Dish 612 could also be a server to a cheap Dish 211 Client.

Dish has a clean simple solution with external USB Drive support up to 750Gbytes. But you can't move your files onto a home network. But Dish allows you to buy your own hardware on Ebay (but you have to make sure it is an account in good standing).

If Uverse can do what Dish can do then they can service a nice chunk of the market but with tougher economic times ahead, "I am turning off my cable becuase it is too expensive" will be a big trend over the next year.

When people realize that OTA HD is identical to Cable reception you are going to see some cutbacks.

If Uverse can offer a 30 channel HD package, 50, 100 and so on then they can capture a wide swath of customers but I suspect that their minimum will be like 100 Channels min and $60/month going to $70 next year just like Comcast.

[shadeblue.com]

Originally Posted by OldPCGUY

1. OTA Digital Channel in English for free ~40 in Oakland Area with two Comcast.

Some of us are not so lucky. With only ~5 OTA ATSC channels, not enough selection to go without cable or other alternate provider.

[davefred99]

Originally Posted by mikejaner

Verizon Fios has been doing this for two years. I almost got it, but found out it only supports SD when sending shows to the "dumb boxes" in your house, so you have to watch your HD content where your DVR is. They promised me two years ago they would be adding HD to the whole home DVR solution in "a few months", and I promised them, I would use it when they did. It would be a good backup to SageTV.

I have Verizon Fios and with the latest software upgrade (IMG 1.6) it now streams HD content from the main DVR to any HD receiver. If you only have SD receivers it can not transcode to SD though. Its actually pretty cool and my wife loves it. We still use Sage for Ripped DVD's and as a back up on SD stuff + HD Locals using an HD-Homerun. I was going to get an HD PVR for more Sage HD recording but its just not worth the hassle anymore.

[oddjob]

When it arrives in my neighborhood, I will be signing up . Several of my friends have it and it works great!

[stevech]

Originally Posted by OldPCGUY

OKay here are my key points
...
Comcast raises their rates every year!!!!!!!
I suspect the UVERSE solition will be just as bad.

I can't think of a company with worse customer relations than the "New" AT&T.

It is disgusting, unethical, and bordering on illegal, the tactics they have, and the things they allow their outsourced subcontractors for marketing to do.

To say AT&T SUX is a gross understatement.