Total Home Digital Video Recorder from AT&T U-Verse

The Total Home Digital Video Recorder (THDVR) is here! When we first signed-up for AT&T U-Verse service, the tech mentioned that two big features were scheduled to arrive this year. As I reported back in March, one of the few things we didn't care for about U-Verse service was the limitation of a single High Definition stream. We could watch or record one channel in HD, but the rest had to be standard definition (SD). The second issue was that each home was limited to a single DVR. With Comcast we had two DVRs. The tech said that both of our irritations would be addressed with future software rollouts planned for this year. Two months ago we noticed that AT&T had switched on the 2HD/2SD service, which allows us to watch two high definition streams and two standard definition streams simultaneously in the house. Last week I noticed that the non-DVR equipped sets had the option to view recorded programs. Yeah, the THDVR has arrived!

For folks who use DirectTV, this is nothing new, but I'll explain for those who don't quite know what I mean. In our house, we have one TV that is connected to a DVR, and three TVs that are connected to standard set top boxes (STB). The TV with the DVR can schedule recordings and play them back. The other TVs cannot. Now that the DVR and STBs have been upgraded we can schedule a recording from any TV in the house, and watch it from any TV in the house. So if I'm sitting in the living room and I see that Battlestar Galactica is going to be on later, I can schedule it to record. The next day, when I'm on the treadmill in the basement, I can watch that recording. Not only that, the kids could be in the family room watching a recorded episode of Dora, while my wife is in the living room watching the latest episode of Pushing Daisies in HD.

It's nice to see our service provider keeping a promise and rolling out new features without increasing our costs. This just affirms for us that switching from Comcast was the right decision.