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AT&T To Offer TV Over Phone Lines
ppadala writes "AT&T is upgrading their phone lines to offer video programmes over phone line. The service, called U-verse TV will be available in parts of Southern California communities initially. Channel lineups will be similar to traditional cable and dish offerings. AT&T is insisting that, 'This offering is on par with those of its cable rivals. But AT&T claims that it offers customers more for their money, including fast channel changing, video-on-demand, three set-top boxes, a digital video recorder, a picture-in-picture feature that allows viewers to surf channels without switching channels and an interactive program guide.'"
Ugh. I was interested, until you told us the set top software is being designed by Microsoft. This virtually guarantees it will suck.
Make Slashdot readable! See journal.
But but, Comcast keeps telling me how good they are, like how their 6MBit offering is 5 times faster than 1.2MB DSL. But hey, DSL's 6MB offering is 5 times faster than 1.2MB cable....but wait, what about guaranteed speed to the first 'hub'/'switch'? Or how about to the nearest DNS/news server on my Service Provider's network? "Up to 5 or 6 times faster", yeah, but 5-6x faster at 3am doesn't help me at 5-7pm when neighborhood congestion slows things down. Don't know about now, but I know they don't run a dedicated line to each subscriber and they used to oversubscribe neighborhoods giving speeds as low as 9600 baud. Doesn't happen with my DSL...I don't line share with anyone on the last leg. Comcrap doesn't get it. And yes -- their signal and service are both crappy. My cable bill is on auto-pay. One month, they were late in withdrawing payment -- so they penalized me for late payment. When I called to correct it, they issued a credit, but didn't factor in "interest", so I still have to call in again for another $1.20. credit.
It's not much, but that's why they screw things up -- hoping that customers will just let them keep the $1.20.
Multiply that by enough customers... Then they keep dropping channels every year. This year, they dropped two CW channels and are instead creating their own "internal feed" -- using the CW network feed, then adding their own local content, all because they can provide more advertising. As it is, they cut shows off early before the end of an "act" (or scene), to squeeze in another 15-30 seconds of playtime.
They also, in their extreme incompetence, have the timing off in stomping on network-fed commercial spots, so you'll see network commercials start for 1-2 seconds, then they are cut off with local comcraptic generated spots.
They also are super anal about cutting off feeds that duplicate local shows, even when the local shows are preempted, or have already shown (meaning you miss them), or when the local station is trying to kill the show's audience by putting it on in the 1-6am timeslot. Used to be Andromeda, Mutant X, Stargate, and Outer Limits could all be seen Saturday afternoon, but now they're blocked with the local affiliate showing them in a 1-5am timeslot Sunday morning. Get to sit through tons of "Red-Hot Dateline Girls" ads...yeah...with real live local girls!! That and 2x times the ads with storyline cut to allow the extra advertising.
Oh, yeah, an they really muck up the sound on some stations -- like down-mixing 5.1 Dolby signals from digital by dropping the center and back channels and upping the bass out the side channels. Makes voices, often unintelligible -- they do it alot on the Sci-Fi channel -- a friend who used to have the problem on Comcrap moved to a different suburb and got Cox. All the problems with volume, commercial cutting, and station blocking went away. Amazing how many vendors/merchants now gouge customers as standard business because they can.
Just mentioning their crap service gets me all wound up...