Good riddance to bad rubbish... Part 2
Entry posted by Nathan Strum
1,143 views
So today I got rid of something else that had worn out its welcome. I promised you an ode (although perhaps not in the strictest sense), so here we go...
Oh Cable Company. How I hate you.
Sure, when you were new, you were special.
With more channels and better quality than a roof antenna. Or rabbit ears.
But you took advantage of me.
Raising your prices, and returning nothing.
Making me pay for channels I never watched, and taking away ones I did.
Offering yourself up for less money to other people. But only for a limited time.
Like some cheap floozy.
I never got that kind of a deal.
Then came internet access.
You hooked me all over again with your promises of speed.
And yes, you were better than dial-up. When you worked.
When you didn't, my modem beeped. Incessantly. Annoyingly.
How I wanted to throw that thing across the room.
And yet, I couldn't go back.
I mean c'mon... dial up? No way.
But where could I go?
DSL? Everyone I knew who had it, hated it.
Satellite TV? But then what to do for internet?
I can't even put up a TV antenna here. I live in a valley.
And so, I put up with it. Even as your rates climbed.
And I swear... you were backing up the billing date over the years
to try and squeeze an extra payment out of me.
Well, now I'm leaving you.
I've found somebody else.
Ironically, they once owned you. Now they're competing with you.
Yes, there's competition for you now.
You're no longer all there is. The only game in town. You've lost your appeal.
And you cost too much.
And you're ugly.
And your mother dresses you funny.
Good-bye Cable Company.
After eighteen long years. And a dump-truck full of my money.
It's nothing personal, except the "hating you" part.
And though I wish no harm to anyone,
I hope you go out in a giant, flaming, fireball of death.
Metaphorically speaking.
So how's that for an ode? 
Always reaching for new cultural and literary heights, this blog is.
Yes, I got rid of the Cable Company today. Well, actually, I'll be getting rid of them tomorrow. But their replacement came today: AT&T's U-Verse.
This is basically IPTV. Sort of DSL on steroids, over fiber. With TV.
I've been getting ads from AT&T for months for this service, and filed it away under "sounds too good to be true" and/or "I'll wait for early adopters to find out what's horribly wrong with it". Well, I finally decided to go for it. The reason? Price.
Time Warner Cable (which in my area started out as King VideoCable, then MediaOne, then AT&T, then Comcast) recently broke the $100/month barrier for cable TV and internet access. That was the point at which I decided I didn't want to pay any more to them, and started looking for options. Now, price alone wasn't the only reason. My cable modem would periodically go offline (and beep annoyingly), and more recently, my TV picture had begun to periodically freeze up - and I wasn't using a cable box. So it had to be at their end of things. Some, if not all, of my channels would simply freeze on a still image. Sometimes for minutes, sometimes for hours. The service had become very unreliable, and the picture quality was generally horrible anyway. The only plus was, some HD channels had slipped through (my HDTV has a built-in tuner), and I was able to watch about 5 or 6 network affiliates in HD. Very nice for the Olympics. But SD channels were awful. Worse than they should be. This "might" have improved if I'd switched to digital cable (and gotten one of the cable company's boxes), but that would have cost me more money. That's a step in the wrong direction.
So last week I went into the local AT&T store and ordered up U-Verse, having researched it a fair amount online. Now, to replicate the same service I'd been getting through Time Warner would have cost me only $74/month (3 Mb/sec internet, and basic "U-100" channel line-up) - and that includes a DVR. But I decided to add HD channels (about 40 of them) and the "U-200" channel line-up, since I wanted to get DIY (I'm a hopeless "This Old House" junkie) and a few other channels that offered. Total cost? $99/month. Still cheaper than Time Warner. Eat that, cable company.
What's really interesting about the timing of all this though, is that I found out after I signed up, that Time Warner had cut-off the "free" HD channels I was getting. Apparently they found out people were getting something for nothing. Jerks. Well, now I'm more glad than ever I'm dumping them.
Now, there's a really good write-up on U-Verse here, but I'll give you my own experiences with it so far.
Installation
First, we set-up a two-hour window of time to start the installation. They were a few minutes late, but acceptable, and they called when they were about 15 minutes away. That's much nicer than just showing up whenever. Certainly better than the cable company. When you sign up, they tell you the installation can take 4-6 hours. Generally, in a house that's of newer construction, it goes much quicker. But I live in an old apartment building with no attic or crawl-spaces or access to existing wiring, except what's right at the faceplates and the main box outside. The wiring in the building was usable, but he had to improvise a little bit to make it work (using a combination of the phone line and leftover cable coax), and they had to call a service crew to come out and fix some things down the street. What surprised me - is that they did all this right on the spot. I didn't have to wait an extra day or more for it.
The installer was very knowledgeable, and very professional. He'd been doing this for over a year and a half, and clearly knew his stuff, and how to deal with problematic buildings like mine. He was patient, courteous, thorough, and always kept me in the loop as to what he was doing. Very unlike cable installers, which tend to come off like the Three Stooges; but the old, unfunny Three Stooges with Joe Besser.
Anyway, about five hours later, I was up and running. Internet, wireless router and TV. And installation was free.
The TV
This is what TV should look like. The DVR has component and HDMI outputs (I'm using HDMI) and the picture looks great. Even the standard def channels are scaled up to 1080i, and while it's not super-clean like an upconverting DVD player, it's much better than cable. The HD channels (and there are so many of them) look fantastic! I can't wait to watch MythBusters in HD. I've been sitting around watching the Red Sox beat up on L.A., the Food Network; and HGTV in HD all evening. Plus some standard def stuff, too.
I'm getting way more channels than I got with cable (for less money too, remember?), and the response when changing channels is practically instant (as opposed to changing digital channels on cable). The DVR has picture-in-picture previews when you're looking through the onscreen guide, and setting up to record programs (up to four standard def channels simultaneously, or one in HD) is a breeze. Plus - I can set it to record from any computer with web access (handy if I'm on vacation). It also handles the usual DVR stuff like pausing live TV and such. Now, I should point out I've never had a DVR before, and I was practically giddy playing with it this evening. It's not as full-featured as TiVo (as I understand) but it's a huge step up from where I was, and is more than adequate for my needs. After perusing some websites about it, I found that when it records, it just dumps the MPEG stream straight to its hard drive - no recompressing. Nice.
The onscreen interface is well-done, although it's too bad that it's running Windows CE (for no other reason that I'm a die-hard Mac fanatic, and it looks bad at MUG meetings). But hey, several hours into it, and no crashes yet. 
Internet access
The cheapest option would have been 1.5 Mbps. But I wanted some more speed than that, so I opted for 3 Mbps, knowing that I could get more speed for more money later, if I needed it. A pleasant surprise was that when I went to the AT&T store, after talking to me for a few minutes, they suggested the exact services I'd already decided I wanted. Whether it was a lucky guess or knowledgeable sales staff - I don't know. I prefer to think the latter. I mainly went with 3 Mbps since my cable modem topped out at just under 4 Mbps anyway, which had been fine for what I use the web for.
So far, it's been fine. Even though it tests slower than Time Warner, pages generally seem to open faster. Not sure why this is (although the much higher upload speed could have something to do with it), and maybe it's my imagination, but in general, the internet feels slightly zippier. It's not fast enough to play HD streams, but it does just fine with YouTube and other non-HD video streams. And if I need to double this to 6 Mbps, it's just another $5 a month. For what I'm getting already, the thought of having to pay a little extra doesn't bother me.
Here are some comparisons from speedtest.net (Time Warner is on the left, U-Verse is on the right):
The only glitch I've run into so far is that my existing e-mail account won't send through AT&T's SMTP server. I have to contact tech support about it. It has something to do with authorizing that particular account to use their server, but the help page for it comes up as missing. I can receive mail just fine, and the new AT&T account works as it should, but I have no plans to use it. I've had the same e-mail address for 14 years.
I'm sure as time goes along, I'll find some things that annoy me about U-Verse. Already I've found that there are so many TV channels, that surfing is simply out-of-the-question now. I have set up a list of favorites, but it still takes a few button presses to access them (there should just be a "favorites" button on the remote). You also can't program recordings more than two weeks in advance (although you can set up entire series or certain shows to record ad infinitum). But already I'm far happier with U-Verse than I ever was with cable. More TV, better TV, a DVR, internet access, unified billing with my phone service, and I'm saving money. Once I get the e-mail hammered out, I should be a very happy camper indeed.
Plus, I'm getting $100 back. I'm assuming they'll just take it off my monthly bill. But hey, it beats a punch in the throat any day.
I can't wait to tell the cable company.
Like us on Facebook
Follow us on Twitter
AtariAge on Instagram
Watch us on YouTube
Chat on Discord
18 Comments
Recommended Comments