Comcast vs. AT&T U-Verse

Competition is a good thing. Over the past couple months I've seen AT&T trucks rolling all over town, setting up little tents and doing lots of infrastructure work. Turns out they were installing fiber so they could offer U-Verse service in our area. U-Verse is AT&T's multi-service answer to your cable companies combined internet, television, and phone service.

The Frustration

I'm currently a Comcast customer (formerly Insight, rolled into Comcast for reasons unknown). I'm paying entirely too much for the service we receive. In our home we have:

• Widescreen HDTV in the living room
  
  • Surround Sound Receiver and Speakers
    
  • DVD / VCR Combo player
    
  • Nintendo Wii
    
  • Gamecube
    
  • Comcast Dual-Tuner DVR
    
  
  
• Studio Monitor in family room
  
  • DVD player
    
  
  
• Standard TV in Basement
  
  • Comcast Dual-Tuner DVR
    
  • Countless video game systems
    
  
  
• Standard TV in bedroom
  
  • hooked directly to coax
    

As far as services, we get:

• Basic Cable (about 30 analog stations)
  
• Extended Cable (another 30 analog and 30 digital stations)
  
• HBO
  
• Starz
  
• Internet Service
  

Our local stations come in HD for free. So for those services and two tuners we were paying a total of $143.09 a month. Good grief! I don't have the bill in front of me, but I think it broke down like this:

Dual Tuner #1	$10
Dual Tuner #2	$13
Basic Cable	$30
Extended Cable	$30
HBO	$15
Starz	$10
Internet Service	$35 ($45 with $10 discount for having television service)
Unexplained taxes and fees	$10
Sub-Total	$143

Needless to say I've felt like Comcast has been bending us over for quite some time. I've also had a persistent gripe about the quality of their Video On Deman (VoD) service. The image is so compressed that during action sequences you can't really tell what is going on. I will say, however, that the quality of live television, especially in HD, is exceptional.

The Pitch

Now U-Verse sends us a pamphlet to let us know that their service is available, along with pricing and service comparisons.

U-Verse U400+Internet Express package includes:

• Nearly all available channels (over 400 digital stations plus local and music channels)
  
• HBO
  
• Starz
  
• Cinemax
  
• Showtime
  
• 1.5Mbps internet service
  
• 1 DVR capable of recording 4 programs included
  
• 3 non-DVR Set top boxes included

Total price - $124.99 / month. I assumed there would again be the usual $10 in unexplainable fees and taxes, but even given that it would be $10 less than Comcast for a whole lot more service. The other thing that really caught my attention was that the U-Verse service runs on CAT-5 cable (the same stuff that runs internet service to your PC). Our house is wired for coax cable (the traditional tv cable), but not for CAT-5. Some modern homes are wired for CAT-5, and I would love for our home to have it so I could get computing devices plugged in anywhere. Turns out, AT&T will wire your home for CAT-5 as part of installation, and the installation fee is waived! Awesome!

The Plan

So here was my plan - play the two competitors against each other. First, I called AT&T to get pricing on U-Verse. I wanted the U400+Internet service ($125) with improved internet service to 3.0Mbps (+$5) and HDTV service (+$10). Total - $140 which is what I'm paying to Comcast but with a lot more service features. I went ahead and placed the order for service and the installer was scheduled to come out in two days.

Next, I called Comcast to let them know about the AT&T service I just ordered, and that I wanted either more services or a discount. The operator stonewalled for a bit, but when she realized I was serious about cancelling that fat $150 / month check, she put me on hold to talk with her manager. Now here is gripe #1 with Comcast...it took 15 minutes on hold before an operator even picked up. Then I spent another 10 minutes on hold while she conferred with her manager. She came back to let me know that there was a package they could put me on that could offer more services than I have now at a lower rate. Turns out they had a HBO+Starz Digital Plus pack that included all of what I was getting plus over 100 digital channels and an extra set top box for $90 / month. Add the internet service and it came to a nice $125 / month. Great, I got what I wanted from Comcast - more services and a lowered bill!

Round 2 - I called AT&T to cancel the install. I had what I wanted from Comcast and there was no sense in installing the AT&T service if it was going to be ten bucks more, even if it did have more channels. After all, I hardly watch television. However, the AT&T operator quickly responded by offering $20 off for the first six months and reminding me that I'd be getting my house wired for CAT-5 for free. In addition, the first month of service would be free, and if I kept the service for 30 days I could get a $100 cash rebate check. So really, it would cost me nothing to try the service for a month to compare AT&T to Comcast. Given this scenario, I kept the appointment for AT&T to install on Friday, which just happened to coincide with when the Comcast installer would be in to install the new set top box in the upstairs bedroom. Oh what fun! Two competing installers at the house at the same time!

Oh, and before I forget, there was no long-term contract required for either of these services, so there was no penalty involved to cancel either way.

The install

On that 8am-noon arrival time, the AT&T installer arrived a little after 9am. Not bad, it gave me time to clear the cobwebs and have a cup of coffee. He walked me through the equipment that would be installed and we surveyed the house for the best way to run cable. We talked about the studio monitor in the family room that currently didn't have cable service and how it would be nice to have there. He took a look and said it would be no problem and no cost to run the extra cable, just $5 / month more on the bill for the extra set top box. So we gave him the go ahead on that extra set. He first had to run out to the D-SLAM (more on what this is later) to get service running to the house.

A little after 10am the Comcast installer arrived. He was in and out in under 30 minutes as he only had to hook up a box. I told him that I hadn't seen the new statiosn activated yet. He tried to call his dispatch to check on it, but ended up on hold for 10 minutes. He indicated that phone times had really degraded since the switch to Comcast, which I thought was a really weird thing for a Comcast installer to admit. Anyway, turns out the local office had a power outage, and the services were switched on by the afternoon.

The AT&T installer was at the house for over 8 hours! He got everything wired, fishing CAT-5 through walls, basement, crawlspace, and the garage attic. He left an extra 8-port gigabit switch to hookup all the PC's in the house and programmed all of the remotes for the TVs. I was really impressed with this guy!

The Comparison

Comcast

Pros:

• High Definition stations look much better
  
• All televisions in the house can view any channel at any time
  
• Two DVRs in the house, each with a dual tuner capable of recording two high definition channels at the same time, or viewing one channel while recording another.

Cons:

• Fewer HD stations available
  
• Fewer total stations available
  
• Video on Demand picture quality is terrible
  
• Only three sets hooked up in the house
  
• No choice on internet speed / price
  

AT&T U-Verse

Pros:

• Standard Definition televisions have a noticeably better picture quality on live television
  
• House is wired for CAT-5, yeah!
  
• Double the number of HD stations available
  
• Double the number of Digital stations available
  
• DVR can record 4 digital stations simultaneously
  
• Video on Demand picture quality is awesome
  
• Can host non-business related services on the internet connection
  

Cons:

• High Definition picture quality is good, but not quite as good as Comcast
  
  • I can definitely see compression artifacts and aliasing in the picture
  
  
• Only one high definition station can be viewed at a time anywhere in the house
  
• Only one DVR on one TV for the house
  
• Overall picture quality on the High Definition Television for any station is not quite as good as Comcast.
  

Result

I'm torn. The HD picture quality on Comcast is noticeably better, and the dual tuner DVRs are a huge plus for my wife who is a voracious TV consumer. She definitely takes advantage of the ability to record one high-def station while viewing another. I don't watch much TV, but the TV I do watch tends to be the niche channels and Video on Demand stuff. So for me, the better picture quality of VoD and the abundance of niche market channels has real appeal. Add to that the inclusion of Cinemax and Showtime in U-Verse which Comcast asks additional payments for. We've only had the service for one weekend, so we'll give it a couple of weeks to see if we lean one way or the other.

The Technology

The U-Verse technology is really interesting. It is like no other television service. With your cable or even satellite television service, the cable company is constantly broadcasting all channels to your house simultaneously. So if you want to switch stations your Set Top Box (STB) just switches the frequency that it is tuned to. With U-Verse, only the channel you request is sent to your house by AT&T. So if none of the STBs in your house are on, nothing is being broadcast to your house. The way it works is a hybrid solution. AT&T runs a fiber optic cable to a residential box called a D-SLAM. The D-SLAM converts the signal on the fiber optic signal to a signal on your copper telephone line that runs the rest of the way to your house. You have to live within 3,000 feet of the D-SLAM for the service to work. This is much cheaper than the route that Verizon is taking with their Fiber to the Premises (FTTP) service where they install new fiber optic wire all the way to your home for every home in the neighborhood. The AT&T solutions uses your existing cable for that "last mile" connection.

So what does all that mean? It means that with U-Verse, you aren't watching traditional cable. Instead, you really have a very high speed internet connection that your television program is sent over. A residential gateway (RG) is installed in your house. This is like a giant cable modem with a 26Mbps connection. That's right, 26Mbps. Why such a big pipe? Not only does your internet service (1.5Mbps with the base offer) travel through this pipe, so does your television data. With current AT&T U-Verse service, one Standard Definition (SD) station uses about 6Mbps. One High Definition (HD) station uses around 19Mbps. This is where the single HD station limit is encountered. You just can't fit 2*19 into 26. If you have two HD sets in the house, only one can watch or record at a time. However, you can get 4 SD channels going at once (4 * 6 < 26). This also leaves room for your internet service (they currently offer up to 6Mbps service) as well as the future addition of VoIP telephone service.

So is that the end of the tech story? Not really. AT&T realizes that this limitation is going to kill them so they are working on improvement. One improvement is called the "bonded pair". You RG only really needs to use two of the wires coming into your house, but the installer is going to hook up another pair. Why? Later this year AT&T is going to enable "bonded pair" technology which effectively gives you two U-Verse hookups on one box, upping the total bandwidth to your RG to around 40Mbps. That alone would allow you to view two HD stations at once, but AT&T isn't going to stop there. They also plan to roll-out improved compression codecs. The U-Verse STB is currently decoding a MPEG-2 stream, which is a fairly old codec. In the coming months the service will be converted to use H.264 streams, which are a much higher compression while also a providing better video quality. The new codec will shrink your SD stream down under 3Mbps and your HD stream to 6.5Mbps. With the increased bandwidth and diminished stream size, AT&T plans to allow you to view 2HD and 2SD streams simultaneously. Let's see, with our new values that's 2*6.5 + 2*3 = 25Mbps. What about that other 15Mbps left over? Expect it to go to VoIP service and faster internet connections, or possibly some as yet unannounced service.

One last thing - the single DVR limit. Yeah, that's going away too. In the second half of this year AT&T is expected to release the Whole House Digital Video Record (or WHDVR for short) firmware that will allow you to stream recorded programs on your one DVR to any other set top box in your house. So now you can treat all of those STB's just like a DVR, and ignore the fact that the recording is being stored on another box. Neat!

Final Thoughts

Like I said, I'm torn on what to do about our service. But what would I recommend? If you do not have HDTV, it would be a no brainer to sign-up for U-Verse service over standard cable. The quality and selection are just so much better. If you have just one HDTV...it is going to depend on your taste. If you are HD snob, you'll be disappointed with the current service over what cable and satellite provide. On the other hand, if you have a smaller HD set, or just don't care about the quality, I would still recommend signing up. If you have more than one HD set that you use, the U-Verse product just won't work for you, so stay with what you have.

Television consumers are going to see great benefits of AT&T, Comcast, DirecTV, Dish, and all the other players going head to head for your entertainment dollar. Expect prices to come down and services to go up. Competition is a good thing!