Elistan

I currently have DirecTV, no HD feed, and an HD TV. I was going to go with Dish's HD package when a flyer for ATT's U-Verse showed up. It's a fiber optic service like Verizon's FIOS - includes only television and Internet at the moment, however. We checked out the DVR functionality at the ATT store in Northpark Mall and thought it would be worth taking a chance on it. Since we'll be able to cancel our land line, it'll end up being cheaper overall than DirecTV + SBC DSL + SBC land line.

It's all IP based - we'll essentially be watching a multicasted video stream like you would on any computer on the Internet. I understand that HD feeds are by demand only, due to the bandwidth they require. I heard that a full 1920x1080i HD signal consumes 18megabits/second of bandwith if it's MPEG2. U-Verse uses MPEG4 compression, and I've read each HD channel is only 10mbs. That means only a single HD show can be recorded/watched at a time, but up to four SD shows are available at once.

Usually, that high a level of bandwith requires a fiber connection to the house. However we live in a 1950's neighborhood where everything's on telephone poles. We were told that in our case, the fiber is run to a central box which then has copper cables to the houses. I hope the bandwidth doesn't suffer. I haven't seen any new cables run, in any case - is it possible they'll use the existing telephone runs? (Like DSL but much faster?)

Well, we'll see how it goes in three weeks...

mxt_77

[quote name='Elistan' date='Mar 26 2007, 01:54 PM'] I haven't seen any new cables run, in any case - is it possible they'll use the existing telephone runs?

Elistan

Huh. Based on some more reading, this appears to simply be a hopped up DSL connection. Regular phone line with DSL goes to the house, which is then split somehow into video and Internet interfaces. The set-top boxes can use CAT5, it seems.

We've been keeping our land line around because we understoon it was required for DSL. I wonder if we were mistaken, or if out plan on cancelling the land line won't work?

TxRedHot_S2K

AT&T is implementing what is called "fiber to the node", which is just what Elistan described. Fiber to a box and then extended to the copper which runs into the house. Verizon implemented "fiber to the premise" (FTTP), which means they ran fiber to every house and the copper facilities are no longer used once the FIOS is installed.

I know Verizon has been doing testing locally to allow DSL customers to have a stand-alone line and not require voice services. (It is already available in other states.) I believe all the telcos are going to be doing this, if AT&T isn't already. I'm not sure what the savings is/will be, but I can tell you they won't offer it if not asked about it.

04NickySP2

I can't forsee existing copper supporting speeds needed for HD TV.
I just checked and they show uverse as 20Megabits/sec but it appears to be shared bandwidth for TV/Internet/Phone.


My understanding was HD 1080i was more like 19.2megabits/sec.

Elistan

Something I found on wikipedia: "MPEG4/AVC or WMV-HD produce very good results with 6 to 8Mbits/s, compared to which the 25Mbits/s of HDV represents a much lower degree of compression, with much less visible artifacts."

U-Verse uses MPEG4. VDSL is supposedly good for 52mbit down and 12mbit up...

TommyDeVito

AT&T should just go FTTP. All of us they are stuck in their areas are screwed for quite a while. FIOS is very nice, a friend has it locally. UVerse was originally called "Project Lightspeed".....all AT&T has done is fuk it up from the get go. They were supposed to launch it a looooong time ago and have drug their feet.