AT&T exec talks U-verse, HD plans
By Darren Murph 
posted Aug 12th 2008 1:42PM
posted Aug 12th 2008 1:42PM
Shortly after breaking the semi-magical 500,000 subscriber mark, AT&T's executive vice president of content Dan York sat down for an interview on the future of U-verse. The bigwig made known that U-verse TV's long-term HD plans were still undisclosed, though "north of 100 [HD channels]" were in its near-term sights. He also insinuated that HD VOD was still aways out, though he did acknowledge that "HD is clearly important to consumers." He also hinted that more substantial changes could come to the service once the really magical one million subscriber mark was passed, suggesting that it could leverage better deals and possibly more content by being able to claim a cool million on the roster. It's a fairly interesting read if you're interested in AT&T's take on IPTV -- we're just anxious to see it come to more places.[Via SmartBrief]
I just recently signed up for UVerse and the 4 simultaneous streams (any definition) and 2 simultaneous HD streams is really a pain. I might be switching back to cable and I'll miss my extra HD channels, but the stream limits are just to restrictive.
I just got mine installed in Miami,Florida. Coming from DirecTV, im very impressed with the HD quality, and the ONDemand is sick.
not being sarcastic, but how many streams would you need? 4HD total so you could DVR on two different TVs?
Well, there's three people in our house and three HDTVs and one regular TV. So if I'm watching HDTV Olympics in my room, a roommate is watching HDTV Weeds in his room, no one can watch and HDTV Angels game in the main room - or else one of us has to switch to SD.
Or, as was the case earlier this week, I wanted to watch the Olympics so I set two programs to record in SD on the DVR. Our renter wanted to watch HDTV as well, so there goes all 4 streams and no one else can watch TV. Once you have 3 or more people living in a house, all who want to watch their own thing and maybe record another program, you run into tons of problems. I don't know what we're going to do when the Fall season comes around and different people want to record different things...
Actually, the 2HD/2SD limitation is somewhat restrictive. Just this past weekend, I wanted to watch the redsox game on TBSHD, and two olympics events on UniversalHD and NBCHD. I would have been nice if I was able to record two of the events and watch one live.
You could always use the DVR to record two channels and then change the input on your TV and watch HD NBC on OTA
Still waiting for U-verse to come to downtown Houston. It's a shame that the 4th largest city doesn't get any love unless you live in a rich area.
Why do they ave the stream limit anyway? The price and HD selection is great, but that's a pretty big limitation to have when HD sets are taking over. Nobody else has those limits.
The streaming limit is based on fair-weighting over the limited amount of bandwidth to the premise. This would not have been a problem had they deployed fiber to the home.
Which is why I would switch to Fios in a second if it were available in my neighborhood.
I've been a U-Verse customer for 4 months now and absolutely love it. I am a single bachelor living alone with two HDTVs in my home. As far as the streams are concerned, you have to examine your situation and determine if U-Verse will workout for you. Yes, there are definite limitations to the service. If you're living in a household with 3 or more viewers and 3 or more HDTVs who will be watching tv simultaneously for example, U-Verse would probably not workout so well for you. This is something that people should take into consideration beforehand and not sign up for the service and then complain about it afterwards when it's not working out for them.
Keep in mind that U-Verse is still a fledgling IPTV service that is still in it's early stages of development and growth. As time goes on, many of these limitations will be reduced or eliminated altogether. However if you cannot wait for U-Verse's growth and you need to satisfy your viewing needs right away, stick with cable or another source.