Re: WOW no longer going to carry FSC....WTH? Get DirecTV. It's by far your best option. The only thing I'll miss is ONN. WAY more HD programming. U-Verse isn't bad, but I hear they do some weird ass compression on their HD signal, which isn't cool for those of us with 1080p TVs. I don't watch a ton of TV when the kids are in season but when they aren't I watch a fair amount. My wife stays home so she does and loves all the options on DirecTV. I am also willing to pay a premium to have the channels I want even if I don't watch them a lot.
Re: WOW no longer going to carry FSC....WTH? U-Verse is better than TW with HD picture. If you can't have (or don't want) a satellite, U-Verse is fine. I apologize if I've already posted this, but if you try to watch recorded HD content on a SD tv, it won't play. I have no idea why the heck this is, but you can't do it. You can watch live HD TV on an SD TV, but you can't play HD content off the DVR onto a SD TV.
Yeah I switched to Time Warner in time to get a DVR for the last world cup. Well the cable went out with no power outage 3 times during those first two weeks, including twice out of the three USA games. And all they wanted to do was refund me a few cents for the % time cable was out. On top of the fact that they didn't give me the promised rate until the 3rd time we called and bitched about it. Needless to say, but the time they gave us the rate they promised us, I had already called WOW about switching back. Not real happy that WOW's tried a bit of the rate rising game too, but when I compare the bundle package to anything else it's as good or better price-wise.
Re: WOW no longer going to carry FSC....WTH? Aside: there is virtually no such thing as "can't have". Apartment complexes and condo associations are required by law to let you have satellite dishes. You just have to be willing to put up a fight. (That doesn't surmount line-of-sight problems, of course - you can't force your apartment complex to cut down a tree or anything - but they can't force you to take down a dish if you can find a good line-of-sight.) Just a reminder, but IANAL, and I have not revisited this issue for over 5 years. My current condo has a private back yard, so the only people that can even see my dish are my two immediate neighbors when they stand at the top of their stairs in their back yards, so I don't really care about it.
Re: WOW no longer going to carry FSC....WTH? Not based on the folks I've talked to. Their picture doesn't look nearly as sharp especially on larger sets. These guys are all cable guys so they have their own agendas, but the comments at the end of this article are interesting. http://www.thetruthaboutuverse.com/is-u-verse-hdtv-really-hdtv/
Yes, FSC is starting to follow the MTV mold, where eventually the only thing you DON'T have on TV is soccer. First it was "Sky Sports News", then "Fox Fone-In", then "Dream Team", then other crap. I want to watch a game in the evening, not a TV show. I'll have to look for GolTV. Cheers!
A couple of points from a previous DirecTV (for 10 years!) subscriber who just moved to TW. First things first - only TiVo matters: all other boxes and DVRs are painful reminders they aren't TiVo. Also, I HATE cable companies. That being said - DirecTV really blew it with their suppor for TiVo. However, they promised a new HD TiVo box sometimes next year. The biggest gripe I had was that the TiVo software they suppored was REALLY old and lots of new features simply didn't exist. Hopefully, the new box won't be stuck in 2008 for the next 5 years. Time Warner supports CableCards so I am happy with the TiVo system I have. However - (this is the part where cable companies suck) - EVERY ONE of their channels is marked Copy-Once, so multiroom TiVo (the ability to record a show on one TiVo and view it on another or to move it to your computer, iPod or DVD recorder) is completely broken. It turns out it is the cable company who is doing this, not the producer, even though TW claims otherwise. It's completely absurd. Another problem is Switched Digital - the ability to make a channel appear only when the user requests it. Because CableCards aren't bidirectional, I can't see a bunch of channels, many of which are HD, which is why I moved to TW in the first place. This is supposed to change shortly with a free piece of equipment called a Tunning Adapter TW is supposed to offer. Lastly, TW doesn't have GolTV and seeing how they act with large companies like Viacom, I won't hold my breath they will listen to us and sign GolTV. UVerse has another problem - bandwidth. Only one HD program can come into the house at any point, so if you have two TVs turned on at the same time, only one gets to watch HD. I am not sure if TiVo supports them. I'll have to check. So - I am waiting to see what DirecTV does with the new TiVo boxes. Also, I want to see what AT&T does with UVerse and if Verizon FiOS comes to Dublin. Once I moved to HD, I can't go back. Really.
What am I missing by not having TiVo proper? The thumbs up/thumbs down feature? I don't really care about programming it via my cell phone, and the U-Verse DVRs do support online adding. Computers aren't obsolete just yet. Time Warner does have Gol TV in some parts of the country. Get everyone you know to call in and request it. If they have enough calls, they'll probably be happy to add it to their sports pack. http://www.multichannel.com/article/CA6586005.html U-Verse now has the ability to get 2 HD streams and 4 total. They're even working on more. I see no reason why you couldn't hook your TiVo up to a U-Verse box. Two HD streams/channels/whatever seems to be the same amount as everyone else. TW's DVR is a dual-tuner, as are ones from the satellite companies, right? AT&T's box is anywhere from 1-4 SD and 1-2 HD. If you don't mind not being able to watch previously recorded HD programs on an SD TV (grrrr) or paying additional for boxes when the sales rep (who wasn't quite clear he was working for an outside company and entirely on commission) said additional boxes were free (they were for a while), then AT&T is a fine service.
Re: WOW no longer going to carry FSC....WTH? Well, true. A lot of associations are picky about what you can and can't have. I remember reading about an association somewhere that asked for the removal of a sign alerting firefighters to the presence of pets and elderly people in the house because the "sign was too big" or something. I'd guess that in the above situation, the only options would be to move out or risk pissing off the association, but I don't think the elderly people really gave a shit how they were watching their TV, just as long as the thing played Price Is Right, Wheel of Fortune, or whatever the heck they watched. However, another true story in Columbus: A tenant in a four-unit building (two apartments upstairs and two downstairs) wanted to put satellite service in her unit. According to the installer, a hole would have had to been drilled in the wall so the wires could have gone from the dish to the receiver. The landlord said something along the lines of "do what you want, but don't drill holes." The tenant had to settle for cable. In the second situation, who's right? I'd guess if the tenant really insisted on the satellite, then a security deposit could be made to pay to fix any damages, but I guess they weren't that insistent. (It seemed like more a situation of "I already have the stuff" rather than "I really need channel XYZ which is only available on satellite.")
A few things - whole-house networking (if the d@mn DRM bits aren't set by the broadcaster ); online programming; TiVoToGo; Netflix; Amazon Unbox. That's just in terms of features (there are more, but I won't bother you). As for the experience - it's like having a BMW and a Yugo, or a Mac and a Windows box. They both get you there, but *how* they do it is another story. TiVo has no competitor - I've already seen the DTV NDS boxes, the TW DVR (which is just simply pittiful). It is responsive, it is fast, it is accurate, it never fails, it's trivially simple to operate. The rest don't hold a candle. That's good to know actually. I'll check into it. It turns out they don't quite work together quite right. I'll have to look into it more.
I don't get the whole Netflix hype. If I want to watch a movie, why would I want to watch it in three days? I guess I could download it to the box, (does that require a wait?) I'm usually fine with HBO/Cinemax/whatever on demand. Begin watching in less than 5 seconds. You can't DVR on-demand, but for most movies, isn't one viewing generally enough? Besides, after subscribing to HBO On Demand for more than 3-4 months, you'll find plenty of repeats. Being able to control live TV on any TV would be sweet. I'd be surprised if AT&T isn't working on this. For some odd reason, whenever someone orders free on demand programs on U-Verse, the titles appear on the bill with a fee of $0.00. One of the oddest things i've seen ever. I think a lot of the TW DVR issues go back to the Navigator on-screen guide. The complaints from TW customers really went through the roof when Navigator was launched. A few minutes ago, ABC local news ran a story about the Viacom/TW deal. According to the story, rates will not go up as a result of the deal. Rates will go up, they always do, but they'll disguise the rates (as anyone else would) as something else.
How much does the TW DVR cost? We should all own one by now because of our $9.00 monthly rental fees. I'm really not happy about the additional $8.00 monthly fee to actually use the DVR to save programs.
Netflix with Tivo as well as Amazon Unbox with Tivo is over broadband, so it's immediate. Amazon stuff is downloaded to your machine, whereas Netflix is truly on demand. You push a button and starts playing. What's quite amazing is that I watched HD movies from Netflix over broadband and only twice did the stream interrupt for a few seconds. Very cool. Essentially, it's on-demand without the cable company. Most stuff costs money, but so do ppv movies so the difference is that I don't have to get out of the house. Not all movies can be downloaded though so the selection is spotty. I never understood HBO/Cinemax, etc. They never have anything new so why would I pay a fee every month? If I want to watch old movies, I'll just find them on TBS or USA
It wasn't clear to me - it's something like $6-7 a month and it comes bundled with some other channels I didn't care for. However - the thing is absolutely awful. The guy who installed my CableCards complained about the service calls he need to field on that TW DVR. I saw it at a friends' house - it is sooooooo slow, you can't tell it's working until a few seconds later. Terrible. My buddy gave it back because it was so bad.
I have an ancient TiVo (the old Philips DirecTiVo) that I still use, and even tho they froze the software at version 3.5, it's still light-years beyond the PVR available from TW. However, feature-wise it's impossible to beat MythTV. It just isn't a plug-and-play consumer device. I have one, and it's amazingly awesome. Part of why I was interested in UVerse was the "whole-house DVR" capability; I wanted to compare it to the whole-house DVR capability I have now with MythTV. (I just installed Ubuntu on an old desktop machine, added the MythTV packages, and I just turned my desktop machine w/ widescreen HD LCD into another TV viewing location. Just fire up the MythTV software, and I can watch anything my main DVR has recorded.) That's about the only real limitation apartment complexes have - no permanent modifications. There are some technological solutions, tho, such as short "flat" coax cables that can be run under a closed window. I have this on my Xbox, and it works pretty well. Unfortunately, my DSL speed is crappy, so the video quality isn't that great. But it does work. The original programming. Plus, I prefer watching the movies in widescreen without edits. But really, it's the original programming. That's why I had HBO.
You still need a cable box or satellite box. I'm using an antenna and two HDTV tuners to get OTA HD (I'm watching the Sugar Bowl on it right now), and I have a D10 DirecTV box that dumps it's output into a Hauppauge PVR-500 card. I have a little Linux program that sends channel change commands via a serial port connection with the D10. To get HD from sat or cable, you need to get a Hauppauge HD-PVR box (new hardware introduced this year that compresses component video into H.264 and dumps it over USB2 to the MythTV server) and you need to be running the trunk (development) version of MythTV. I expect support for the HD-PVR to be stable sometime next year (and in the "release" version of MythTV), and I'll consider upgrading to HD satellite at that point. (Unfortunately, I'll have to upgrade my MythTV frontends as well, as they are just a hair too slow to decode H.264 video, but they do OTA HD just fine. At the time I built them, there was no solution for non-OTA HD.)
The bandwidth limitation of UVerse worries me a bit, but I think it's a product that will continue to get better with time. It seems like there are just too many compromises that you have to make with UVerse.
Yes. HBO has had hit shows like Sopranos, Sex & the City, and Entourage. I've heard good reviews about Dexter and "The L Word" on Cinemax. HBO's documentaries are top of the line as well. Other than the fact that they're Americans, I don't really care about the USWNT. Outside of the Olympics and WWC, I couldn't tell you how they're doing, but I did find the HBO documentary good. (I found it interesting that they censored "Viking bitches" on HBO family as well as in later airs, but I figure that's because of the target audience.) Once in a while they'll show a movie on there you want to see. The good thing about movies on premium channels is that they're not edited (other than during the credits on Starz, when they show a "coming up next" bar) and there's no annoying advertising. I think HBO is the only one not to watermark movies, though. Of course, if something sounds good, but turns out to be crappy, it doesn't cost anything extra to bail out 20 minutes in. Nothing against NetFlix, Unbox, or anything like that, but I'd be surprised if they gave refunds for partial viewings.
Keep in mind that U-Verse isn't just new to Central Ohio, but it's new everywhere. You're right that they'll get better as time goes on. Like I said, there's really nothing to worry about with their bandwidth, unless you have more than 2 HDTVs or more than 4-5 total TVs. The ability to record 2 shows in HD at the same time is on par with everyone else, and the ability to record 4 shows total at the same time is better than anyone else's standard setup, AFAIK. Of course, you could probably figure out a way to record 20 shows at once on any provider if you had the technical know-how, but that's beside the point. I don't have an external DVR, so that's a non-issue to me.
I disagree. They can provide me with all the HD streams and DVR they want but if they aren't the same quality that I can get with another provider or service it doesn't really do me any good. I'm a videophile to an extent so crappy HD that is all pixelated and isn't the right colors isn't what I am willing to pay for. The same is true for their audio getting out of sync too frequently. Apparently if you switch from HDMI cables to component cables it fixes some users' issues. Interesting workaround.
Well, after almost a month since the initial install of UVerse was scrubbed because of some issue that would require shutting of phone service to the other condos in the same building, my wife's grandmother bailed on getting UVerse and stuck with DISH. Of course, she had her DISH service updated with new hardware, and the workers left her remotes completely FUBAR. I had to spend an hour over there today getting the remotes programmed correctly and training her how to use everything. It's too bad - I was looking forward to getting a good look at UVerse up close.
I was prepared to be disappointed by the Uverse HD picture quality after reading some horror stories at avsforum and a few other places but it is not bad at all. The quality is similar to what I had with TW. It is certainly not as good as what I get OTA though and that is no surprise. Both ATT and TW compress their signal and it seems that ATT has made some improvements since the initial roll out. I don't get a lot of macroblocking or color issues. Obviously fast moving back grounds, especially sporting events can cause some pixelization, but that is found in all compressed HD signals.
All of the providers do compression of some degree, but I rarely see any pixelization on DirecTv with sports and frankly it's one of the big reasons I made the jump. I had WOW before and was fairly pleased with it, but the lack of HD programming drove me nuts (I know they've added more). TW is always the first to come out with new things in the cable space and that bothered me too. I do agree though my OTA stuff is WAY better than anything any provider can give me.
