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So it has been a little over two weeks since I’ve had AT&T Uverse installed.  I’ll run through installation and some thoughts on the service.  If you don’t want to read all of this, summary: Uverse is great!

Installation

I was scheduled to have AT&T Uverse installed on Saturday, June 18th.  The premises technician was 30 minutes late though, not a big deal.  If you refer to my previous post, I said I already had an Ethernet GigE network installed in my house.  This made my installation incredibly quick and painless.  I received three pieces of AT&T equipment:

2Wire 3800GHV Residential Gateway

Cisco Set-top DVR box

The technician was able to connect the NID to the residential gateway using a coaxial cable.  On the side of my house, the Time Warner Cable NID was very close to the AT&T NID.  So the installer, disconnected (unscrewed from the splitter) a line (of three) from the Time Warner Cable NID and plug it into the AT&T NID.  This brought the signal into my home, into the laundry room and the location of all my network equipment.

NID – Connected via COAX

From there, everything was plug and play.  My Linksys WRT54G2 wireless router was replaced by the residential gateway since it doubled as a wireless router as well.  Each Cisco settop box was plugged into the Ethernet network in each location.  Once the residential gateway was up and running the settop boxes were able to connect to it (via my Ethernet network) and it all worked.  My desktop PC acquired a new IP address and worked too.  We spent more time programming the actual remotes than setting up the televisions…lol.

The Service

I subscribed to the U200 television package with the 12Mbps/1.5Mbps internet service.

Everything looks good, although my ping is about 60ms higher than my ping when I was using Time Warner Cable.  I haven’t noticed any degraded internet performance however.  For all of those interested, I am on the 25/2 profile (25Mbps/2Mbps)…which allows me to record/watch up to 2 high definition shows and 2 standard definition shows simultaneously.  The profile determines the rate you are able to achieve at your home.  It is dependant on your home’s distance from the VRAD, quality of wiring, and any other natural or man made interference.  My line is rated for 41Mbps, so there is some headroom for future expansion (3HD/1SD or 4HD/0SD).  This is fine for me, because I only have a roommate (and soon to be fiancee).  However, if you have more TVs (or people watching TV in different rooms) and record a lot of shows you may find yourself restricted by this limit.

Television service has been, for the most part, rock solid.  The only issue I have been having has been some of the TV guide information (programs and times) have been incorrect, resulting in the wrong program being recorded onto the DVR.  This has happened very rarely however.

The picture quality I receive via AT&T Uverse is comparable to Time Warner Cable.  For the part, everything looks exactly the same, but if you look hard enough, you can see some pixelation, compression, noise, etc.  I would describe AT&T Uverse’s picture quality vs. Time Warner Cable as softer (less sharp).  I am watching TV on a Sharp Aquos 1080P screen.

Other noticeable differences between AT&T Uverse and Time Warner Cable:

• Set your DVR to record programs from an internet browser (including your phone) – can’t do this with TWC
• Set-top box software is way more responsive than whatever software is present on TWC set-top boxes – it’s a night & day difference
• Easily manage your account online (add features and channels, add packages, etc.)

Each home receiving service from AT&T Uverse will get one DVR box.  However, due to the nature of the service, you can watch your DVR recordings on any set top box in your home….this is a great feature.  I’ll be able to record Top Gear and watch anywhere in my home while my fiancee watches Oprah…lol.  There are also some other convenient features such as:

• Multiview (News, Sports, Family): you are able to watch 4 of the preselected channels at a time.  For example, for the Sports Multiview, you can watch all the ESPN network channels at once.  Very handy when there is a major sports tournament on, such as the World Cup or NCAA Basketball Tournament
• AT&T Ubar: provides weather, traffic, stock market, and sports updates on your TV screen
• Yahoo Games: you can play Yahoo games online on your television screen

Other benefits of having AT&T UVerse:

• ESPN3.com access for free (watch live sports online)
• Free access to AT&T’s nationwide WiFi network
• NFL Network HD
• No Time Warner Cable =D

Overall, I’m very pleased with AT&T Uverse.  Should you get AT&T Uverse?  Only if you are unhappy with your current service.  You will not save a whole lot of money vs. your existing cable company and in some instances, Uverse maybe more expensive.  Furthermore, it’s a relatively new technology that is very dependent on the condition of the existing infrastructure.  If the wiring in your home or neighborhood is bad, or you are too far from the VRAD, your experience will most likely suffer.  However, the good thing is you can try it out risk free.  I hope I was clear in this post.  If you have any questions, leave a comment and I’ll try and answer them as best I can.

Extra

If you have AT&T Uverse and you don’t have the 2WireRealtime tool, its a must have.  It will tell you all types of stats about your home’s Uverse network.  You can get it at: http://www.dslreports.com/forum/r24028637-2WireMRTGexe-and-2WireRealtimeexe

Sooo, I’m getting AT&T’s Uverse package installed at my house in two days and moving from Time Warner Cable.  I am getting television and internet.  I’d thought I’d document this process because I was looking for this same information online and was unable to really find a good article (I found a few) documenting the entire process.  So with that said here we go.

Note: AT&T U-Verse is a three-in-one IP solution for digital television, VoIP, and internet services.  The infrastructure is probably way more complicated that I am about to describe.  From what I understand, AT&T runs fiber optic cable to a neighborhood VRAD (Video Ready Access Device) (picture of a VRAD) from a central office.  A VRAD splices the fiber into the copper twisted pair line going to each home.  In order to have access to U-Verse, you must be within 3000 feet of a VRAD.  Outside of this range, service quality diminshes, hence why you are unable to access U-Verse.  This is what they call FTTN (Fiber To The Node).  Verizon FIOS currently runs the fiber optic cable all the way from a central (regional?) location to each customers home.  This is called FTTP (Fiber To The Premises).  As you might imagine, going the FTTP route is very expensive, hence why Verizon has indefinitely suspended new FIOS installations.  However, you do get more throughput over fiber vs. copper.  I think U-Verse tops out around 40Mbps or so over the copper portions of its network whereas FIOS customers can get 50Mbps+ service.  40Mbps is good enough to provide the ability to surf the internet at up to 24Mbps/1Mbps download/upload and watch/record 2HD and 2SD shows at a time.

The Pre-Install

AT&T came out today and checked the phone line running into the NID (network interface device, where a phone company terminates its connection, and the customer begins) and the NID itself.  I looked at it some time ago and it looked like it was added when the house was built in 1971…lol.  So they replaced it.  They replaced the cable (which was just regular untwisted 4 conductor phone cable) with twisted pair CAT5 cable since VDSL (Very high bitrate Digital Suscriber Line) requires twisted pair.  They also removed the NID from the back of the house and added a new NID right next to the NID for Time Warner Cable.

And because I’m always getting into stuff, I had to open the NID to see whats in it.  I opened the customer access portion which is empty.

And the Time Warner NID for good measure.

From looking at the picture it appears that the AT&T U-Verse tech installing the equipment in the house will run a CAT5 cable from the NID (on the customer/empty side). through my crawl space, up to wherever I have him install the RG (residential gateway).  The most likely spot for this is my laundry room as this is where all my network equipment is located.

A little bit about my network setup.  Last Spring, I ran two runs of CAT5E cable to each of the following: my living room, master bedroom, guest bedroom, and office.  Oh it was a pretty intense job, as I had to crawl through my crawl space, which was about 3 feet high to drill the holes.  I also ran coaxial cable into 3 bedrooms as it wasn’t available in any of them when I purchased my house last Spring.

They all terminate in the laundry room into a patch panel.  From there they connect to a Netgear 8-port GigE switch.  The data to the switch is provided by a Linksys WRT54G2 wireless (802.11b/g) router.  Finally, the TWC supplied Motorola cable modem is plugged into the WAN (wide access network) port for internet services.  Right now, I’m using the network for my Playstation 3 (living room), desktop PC (office), 2 laptops (personal & work), and whatever wireless devices I have.  Works great all the time.

My guess is like I said before, the tech will pull CAT5 from the AT&T NID through my crawl space and into my laundry room and terminate it.  From there, it’ll be plugged into a residential gateway.  The residential gateway is the “hub” for U-Verse services.  It routes data to the STB for IP (internet protocol) television service and data services.  The RG can also provide VoIP (voice over IP) services, but I am not getting that at the time of installation since I have no need for a home phone.  The RG is going to sit between the AT&T NID and my Linksys router.  I have a roommate, so that explains all the TVs.  I am going to get a DVR STB (settop box) for the TV with the TWC HD DVR STB and another non-DVR STB for my roommates TV.  And I’m eliminating the TV in my bedroom….meh.  I am only getting one DVR STB because you can stream, over your home network, recorded shows to other STBs in your house…which is outstanding.  I’ll also be able to stream music/pictures from my desktop PC to any STB as well.  I currently stream music, pictures, and video from my desktop PC to my Playstation 3 and laptops….works pretty well.  The new STBs will also be connected to the RG via CAT5 instead of the existing coax.  I have CAT5 in all the places I have TV so that is no problem.

I’ll update this after installation in two days.  Hopefully, I don’t become addicted to NFL Network HD first…lol.