AT&T U-Verse

System: AT&T 3800HGV-B Wireless box.
Motorola VIP1216 DVR

I gave it a chance and I HATE it! I was among the first Tivo users in the United States and I know my DVRs. This system is a bust.

I won't tell you the horror story of getting my AT&T U-Verse installed because it would only be an exercise in futility. So far I've had three visits by techs, one box replacement and ATT has spent approximately 30 man hours on my system. Apparently AT&T was in such a hurry to get their product out there, they forgot to train their technicians.

Why do I hate it? Let me count the ways:

1. The remote control is insensitive to pressure, or too sensitive to pressure depending upon its mood. This results in never knowing where you'll end up when you try to fast forward or backward. You never know when you give the remote a command whether or not the command will be executed. Then, when out of anger you hold the button down more firmly, you overshoot your objective, sometimes accidentally jumping to another program.
2. Sometimes the system tells you it has recorded a program, then when you try to play the program, there's only a split second of it there. Tech support tells me that sometimes if you reboot, the program reappears.
3. The system doesn't follow the rules of recording. Even though you tell it "first runs only" it records what it pleases, pretty much when it pleases.
4. There is no search history. That means that you have to enter the data in every time you want to find a program or actor.
5. Renting their movies: The interface to find the movies is inefficient, the movies are too expensive, and, get this, you are not allowed to record the movies you rent. In some cases, the rental is for a 24-hour period only. If the family hasn't had a chance to watch it within the restricted timeframe.......too bad.
6. Toward the end of a one-hour program, the sound becomes garbled, forcing you to turn the system off. Then when you come back on, you have to start the program over and try to find your place again.
7. The music channels used to be Sirius, but now have changed over to URGE. Nothing in there I can use.
8. Favorites: If you hit "guide" you get every channel listing under the sun. In order to get to your "favorites," you have to go two levels down.
9. The remote is terrible in every way. Many of the buttons are not usable.
10. Although when I signed up I was promised one bill for all my AT&T services, that is still only a dream. Part of the on-going nightmare.

I'm sure I could come up with more things I hate about AT&T U-Verse, but I'm finished for now.

This system is a mess. It isn't user friendly. It's downright user UN-friendly. The service costs $10 more a month than I paid for Dish and is hundreds of times worse in every way.

I realize this system is new and that Microsoft has made us sheep-letts used to paying them for us to work out the bugs, but I resent this mightily.

Under no circumstances do I recommend AT&T U-Verse.

Give me back my Dish!