AT&T U-Verse versus Brighthouse

Brighthouse cable has (had) a monopoly on my hometown's cable and internet service. When I moved into the house, I called Comcast and Comcast told me to call Brighthouse, and even gave me their number. 2 years, 3 months, and 5 days later, a man that predates dirt came knocking on my door, saying that AT&T U-Verse is coming to the area and wanted me to sign up for a free month. It was installed Sunday and two days later here is my feedback about AT&T U-Verse cable and internet service.

It's crap.

I have 1 HD stream and 5 standard def streams. But the DVR won't switch the HD stream to another station on it's own. I'd left it tuned to some HD station Sunday night and as a result, I missed half of Chuck and all of Heroes last night. I went to my recorded programs at about 8:15 to start watching Chuck, it had recorded 15 minutes of a green screen saying I'm not subscribed to this channel. It said the same thing if I tried to switch to the station Chuck was on, so I stopped the recording and was able to browse to the station. I hit record there and that somehow screwed up Heroes.

The user interface for the cable box looks nice, lots of gradients, rounded corners, and transitions between screens. But it locks up a lot and the transitions are choppy. I was scrolling down the guide and it stops responding to my "page down" button presses. I keep pressing and it suddenly catches up and shoots down 5 screens. While in the "recorded TV" section, I tell it to "go back to TV" and find it does help to yell at it and hit the button twice more.

I had two cable boxes installed, but I guess the ancient man that took my order only put in for one. So the second box can't connect to the main box. I called tech support Sunday, was escalated a few times, was on hold a long time, and finally was told they'd take care of it offline and let me know. As of this morning, the box still doesn't work. So I can't say anything good about their tech support. The guy was in Arizona though, guess that's good, could actually understand him.

So tonight, I hook up my Brighthouse box again and pack up the AT&T stuff. I'll call Brighthouse, see if they'll give me a newer model box in exchange for my loyalty to them.