I would not ask anything like this about two local small businesses as that might cause a fuss, but since the subject companies are two international billion-dollar giants, I don’t think this will hurt anyone locally, so I’ll ask for some advice and opinions here.
I’m trying to make a decision. I have had DirecTV for several years and generally like it a lot. It’s super stable, has a fantastic picture, excellent customer service, and very rarely has any outages. However, it is pricey. More importantly, I’m paying $75 per month for Comcast internet. SEVENTY-FIVE BUCKS. So, I’m looking at way to save money here, and I just found out that AT&T just put U-Verse in on my street, and they’re offering a pretty good bundle deal.
So, here’s the question.
Which is better–DirecTV or U-Verse–and why?
Anyone with actual user experience on both systems, please let me know what you think on the following areas.
Overall picture quality
Number of channels in 1080P
On Demand programming and functionality
Reliability (glitches; uptime versus downtime)
Speed and ease of use of the equipment (DVR)
Customer support
Thanks in advance!
Gotcha Covered,
Lee Strickland
Strickland Marine Insurance Agency, Inc. https://stricklandmarine.net
843-795-1000 / 800-446-1862
So far we have been very happy with Uverse. Partly because we didn’t have access to a phone line to our main TV so we were blocked out of movies, etc for DTV. Uverse has all wireless boxes, whole home DVR etc. We have bought a few pay movies with no issues. Their menus and all are very user friendly. Customer service was a strength with DTV I thought, but when Uverse came in the installer gave me his personal number and said you have an issue you don’t call and get Mumbai, you call me personally and I will take care of it. Right on!
I use directv for 2 reasons, seems to have less outages in my area, neighbor has dish, and theirs goes out in the smallest storms. Secondly, I take an extra dish to football games and have an easy set up for tailgates. I have a ton of kids channels my kids love, so thats all I have.
And hey if you go with Direct, I’ll give you my acct # and we both get $10 off the bill for 10 months, hey its a free $100
I use directv for 2 reasons, seems to have less outages in my area, neighbor has dish, and theirs goes out in the smallest storms. Secondly, I take an extra dish to football games and have an easy set up for tailgates. I have a ton of kids channels my kids love, so thats all I have.
And hey if you go with Direct, I’ll give you my acct # and we both get $10 off the bill for 10 months, hey its a free $100
Chris
Greenville
36 Century
Chasin Tail
Thanks. I already have DirecTV and like it a lot. I was wondering if U-Verse was as good or better.
Gotcha Covered,
Lee Strickland
Strickland Marine Insurance Agency, Inc. https://stricklandmarine.net
843-795-1000 / 800-446-1862
We used Direct tv for years…Not bad service, but not great either. We switched to ATT U-Verse about a year ago. We get 250 channels in HD an unlimited time home phone, and fast internet for just under $100 a month $97.85 I believe. So far we have not had an interruption of any kind. We’re happy!
Picture is good. No bad weather blackouts. I’ve had my boxes sometimes lose signal and require a reboot. Seems to be a box problem rather than a signal problem because when one goes down the others work still. It’s only happened twice I believe. No big deal
Thanks, guys. A friend also just called with some more good input about U-Verse.
How about the internet? Anyone compared Comcast’s supposed 24mb to U-Verse’s 18? (I know U-Verse does higher than 18 in some areas, but it’s not available in mine.) Supposedly with Comcast, you’re sharing a pipe with the whole neighborhood, but you have dedicated bandwidth with U-Verse. Any confirmations on that? I used to know all about this stuff in a former life when I was a network guy, but I’m just an old dinosaur now. Got to ask the younger guys now. Haha.
Gotcha Covered,
Lee Strickland
Strickland Marine Insurance Agency, Inc. https://stricklandmarine.net
843-795-1000 / 800-446-1862
We’ve had uverse for a year now and love it. We got HD plus the sports package. Picture is fantastic for me, come over some time and play with the menus if you want. Internet through them too. We don’t do much online, so it seems fast too me. We do stream Netflix a lot and never had a freeze issue. Like optiker, we’ve bought a few movies, $6 each in HD, and there’s been no issues. No complaints. Occasionally well have to reboot the box too, happens once every other month maybe that I notice.
Our router is on one end of the house and I had to buy a signal booster for the wireless, but now works fantastic all over the house. Booster was like $100 at best buy.
I was making the move to Uverse from Com-cast. The package being offered was to good to pass up. But after 2 days of trying to install in my home they gave up. our home was to far from the fiber remote terminal.
The Uverse is is some location is a DSL hybrid based on the old DSL technology. which is copper wire based delivery of the signal to your home from a fiber remote terminal(if you go through one) which has a 4000 foot + or - distance limitation your home can be from the fiber remote terminal.
Was direct tv customer for 14 years. Local phone company ran fiber straight to the house and I bundled with them T.V., DSL, and Phone. Love it. It’s been 6 months and no hitches and no black outs during storms.
Back to Direct T.V. If you tell them you are switching they will automatically give you a discount. After I dropped them, I have been offered deals that are utterly amazing. I’m one that gets a litter perturbed that it takes this to get a deal, so I’m sticking with PRTC. But… with Direct T.V. your best bet for a good deal is to drop them and then wait a very short time and re-join at half price and twice the upgrades. A “new” member is entitled to more than a loyal old customer with Direct tv.
I think it is hit or miss on whether you will have issues with Uverse or not. I made the switch from Comcast to Uverse after a lenthly study, poling friends, neighbors, etc. It was a toss up… some loved it, some hated it. I think it has a lot to do with the wiring infastructure on whether you have problems of not. I went with Uverse because my neighbor had them and never had a problem. Big mistake!! We had constant problems. When it worked, it was great, when it didn’t, it was like pulling teeth to get someone to fix it. After 6 months, I told them to take a flying flip and got Direct TV, now, I am loving life!!! The problem I found with Uverse is when you do have issues, their customer service is the weak link. Everyone who loves Uverse, you will find in most if not all cases, they dont have issues and have never delt with customer service… If you are happy with Direct TV, my advise is to stick with them. If not, you are rolling the dice…
A bad day fishing is much better than a good day at work.
Good input piper. I haven’t had issues thus no issues with customer service due to no experience. Hope its not a nightmare.
Re: Fred67 comment, if you call DTV and express frustration, the deals will flow. That was our experience with them. I was quite happy with DTV overall. My wife kinda made the exec decision to switch in a moment of frustration, and when I found out I was a little pissed, but I’ve been pleasantly surprised with Uverse
Never had DTV so i can’t compare between the 2 TV services. But the primary reason we switched to ATT was internet. We have apple TV with Netflix and getting through a movie or 1 hour tv show with comcast was miserable, constant pausing and loading. Since we have gone with ATT i haven’t had a single hiccup that i can recall. Added bonus(s): better user interface than comcast, can record up to 5 programs at once, and we got on a promotion that will keep our price level for 8 years! Also, our pricture on HD channels is just a good as comcast, and they will give you a couple wireless boxes so you can stick a tv outside or in the garge without running coax.
Mac, we left Comcast because of poor picture quality. The explanation we were given by comcast is that because the signal was being transmitted from the satelite feed, then through hunderds of miles of copper wire until it reached our house, that it was going to be fuzzy… Their solutuion? Pay extra for HD boxes to fix their problem… IMO, DTV has the clearest, sharpest picture quality of all three and has more HD channels at no extra cost than Direct TV has for an extra fee… Internet is another story, I still use Comcast for internet. We generally have 23 megs of download bandwith with comcast. The wife can watch movies on Netflix, the son watching music videos of whatever it is he watches and I can surf the web on my phone or PC and not even know they are on… In short, I have DTV for TV and Comcast for Internet, and paying less than I was paying for everything bundled from Comcast and have 3 times the channels…
A bad day fishing is much better than a good day at work.
Thanks for the continued input here. The more the better. I’ve had similar experience with DirecTV and AT&T. I’m leaning toward keeping DirecTV. I definitely think their customer service is relatively top notch and much better than AT&T’s. One thing I discovered in AT&T’s favor, though, is that they guarantee the monthly rate for the term of the contract, but DirecTV does not. DirecTV only guarantees that you’ll get the DISCOUNT for the term–i.e., that they’ll knock $X off of your bill every month–but the actual base PRICE for any given month can change at their mercy. T&T has the better business practice there, I believe. Still, I’ll probably keep the bird in my hand. Even calling AT&T to discuss ordering options was an exercise that taught me the difference between their customer service and that of DirecTV, and the latter was the clear winner.
Now, whether or not to move from Comcast to AT&T for internet has really boiled down to a speed question. Comcast claims 24Mbps, and my tests show 16-20Mbps (and 5Mbps upload). AT&T boasts 18Mbps, and a friend’s tests show 16Mbps down and less and 2Mbps up. Comcast is charging me a whopping $75 (SEVENTY-FIVE DOLLARS) per month, while AT&T will do their 18Mbps for a LOT less.
Gotcha Covered,
Lee Strickland
Strickland Marine Insurance Agency, Inc. https://stricklandmarine.net
843-795-1000 / 800-446-1862
Pit, the picture quality was never an issue for me with comcast, i had 1 hd box in the living room, and paid for HD channels. When AT&T sold me on the new service the sales rep neglected to tell me the great price i was getting did not include HD. Why would i spend so much on a tv, and not have HD? So after a heated discussion with the middle east i was connected to a person in Columbia, SC who comp’d my HD service for a year. SO technically my bill goes up $10/month next year. As for the internet, i live in one of the old james island neighborhoods so i had to share the comcast internet with several other homes on my street, which i would guess is why it was so slow. my in laws live on johns island with no neighbors in shouting distance and their comcast internet works great. So maybe it has to do with the population density of an area…? End of the day i’m happier with ATT, but it may just be my location.
Thanks for the continued input here. The more the better. I’ve had similar experience with DirecTV and AT&T. I’m leaning toward keeping DirecTV. I definitely think their customer service is relatively top notch and much better than AT&T’s. One thing I discovered in AT&T’s favor, though, is that they guarantee the monthly rate for the term of the contract, but DirecTV does not. DirecTV only guarantees that you’ll get the DISCOUNT for the term–i.e., that they’ll knock $X off of your bill every month–but the actual base PRICE for any given month can change at their mercy. T&T has the better business practice there, I believe. Still, I’ll probably keep the bird in my hand. Even calling AT&T to discuss ordering options was an exercise that taught me the difference between their customer service and that of DirecTV, and the latter was the clear winner.
Now, whether or not to move from Comcast to AT&T for internet has really boiled down to a speed question. Comcast claims 24Mbps, and my tests show 16-20Mbps (and 5Mbps upload). AT&T boasts 18Mbps, and a friend’s tests show 16Mbps down and less and 2Mbps up. Comcast is charging me a whopping $75 (SEVENTY-FIVE DOLLARS) per month, while AT&T will do their 18Mbps for a LOT less.
Gotcha Covered,
Lee Strickland
Strickland Marine Insurance Agency, Inc. https://stricklandmarine.net
843-795-1000 / 800-446-1862
With the modem/router that a cable company gives you, you are never going to really get the speeds that they say you are because that equipment is crap. You are better off buying your own modem and a separate router. Since ATT Uverse uses FiberOptic line through out the house, you should have a better picture and faster internet speeds.
