Unverse vs direct (home, promotional, price)

[texas7]

So att owns uverse and direct. They offer direct for quite a bit less per month. What's the catch? Less basic stations, less reliability? Anyone make this switch and have info?

[ilikeme]

I have DirecTV and have had Crap-Verse in the past. DirecTV has much better picture and sound quality, and is more reliable. It rarely goes out during extremely heavy storms, and when it does its for no more than a few minutes. I have an attic antenna hooked up to my primary DVR and shared between all of the other receivers as a backup for the local channels at least in the rare instances it does go out. The antenna also allows me to get the digital sub-channels from the local stations.

I had U-Verse and it was constantly going out and the picture quality was horrid.

[crone]

We had direct tv for years. We have had UVerse for the past 2.

Direct TV was a lot better. It rarely went out. Not so for UVerse.

[d2mini]

Satellite will go out in storms, when you want to be inside watching tv.
We had uverse, switched to direct tv before they were owned by att, then just recently switched back to att.
We had to use att for internet the whole time anyway.
Programming is real similar for both except for minor things.
Uverse NEVER goes out for us and the whole menu system, on demand, etc is much more intuitive with Uverse.
I think the Direct TV dvr had a little more capacity but not a big deal.
In the end, I feel Uverse beats out Direct TV. The pricing was better for ATT for us too.

[MichelleL66]

Never had problems with Uverse.
Had to call in every year when the discount offers end though, would cost me extra $70/m if I didn't do it.

[acid11]

Anyone have recent encounters after promotion period expires? Mine is coming up soon and even after talking to retentions, my price will jump over $20 and I don't want that. I could switch over the DTV since they are same company, but I'm not fond of their 24 month contracts, and price increase after 12 mo.

[kreeyax]

Originally Posted by d2mini

Satellite will go out in storms, when you want to be inside watching tv.
We had uverse, switched to direct tv before they were owned by att, then just recently switched back to att.
We had to use att for internet the whole time anyway.
Programming is real similar for both except for minor things.
Uverse NEVER goes out for us and the whole menu system, on demand, etc is much more intuitive with Uverse.
I think the Direct TV dvr had a little more capacity but not a big deal.
In the end, I feel Uverse beats out Direct TV. The pricing was better for ATT for us too.

This is the primary reason I'm hesitant to switch from U-Verse to DirecTV. I used to have Dish and every time we got heavy rain we couldn't watch TV. U-Verse has been rock solid reliable for us, but that could be because we have fiber to the premises. I'm afraid to go from fiber to satellite but I know we'd probably save a good bit of money since we have U450, which is expensive as hell. We have Netflix and Amazon Prime too, so maybe it's just time to cut the TV cord all together.

[grooveman]

We moved into our home last year and signed with U-Verse, TV and internet. The promotional pricing for the first year is almost up and I knew I would have to make a decision between satellite, or staying with what we have which we like, and are familiar with.
I called AT&T and was able to keep the package I have which is U-300, bumped the internet speed up to the 300MBPS and kept the cost around the same as I am paying now with a new 2 year commitment. The only caveat is I had to grant permission for them to monitor my web browsing history which allows them to serve targeted ads to me, something Facebook and others already do so no biggie there. They make money off of advertising which makes up some of the difference for them I suppose.

[ipuck]

I cut the cord last month and went exclusive netflix/amazon. Absolutely didn't miss a beat.

Well beside the Rockets/stros, but it was getting ridiculous as I was recording them and fast forward half the game so I don't even want to do that anymore.

[NTexas2010]

Originally Posted by ipuck

I cut the cord last month and went exclusive netflix/amazon. Absolutely didn't miss a beat.

Well beside the Rockets/stros, but it was getting ridiculous as I was recording them and fast forward half the game so I don't even want to do that anymore.

Did the same thing. Netflix + Hulu + SlingTV for a total of $40/month, versus the $110/month we were paying for Directv (Middle channel package, HD-DVR, 4 genie boxes). We really only had Directv for sports, and with Sling you get ESPN and ESPN 2 plus other channels for $20/month and can add the "sports package" (ESPN U, SEC Network and a few others) for $5/month.

Best decision we've made in years.