23 November 2008
Ten Second Review: AT&T U-Verse
Wednesday, I had AT&T U-Verse IPTV and internet installed, with the goal of ditching my Dish Network/Comcast Internet combo if everything worked satisfactorily.
I'm really pleased with the U-Verse service so far, and canceled the Dish/Comcast combo over the weekend.
Here are some quick thoughts comparing U-Verse and Dish/Comcast:
Video: The quality of the Dish HD streams is a little higher than the AT&T HD streams -- but only slightly (probably not discernible to many), and neither is quite as good as OTA HD; the U-Verse SD streams seem a little better than Dish. The nearly instantaneous channel change of U-Verse beats the 2-3 second lag of Dish. I liked the Dish programming guide a little better, but that's subjective. I had comparable channel lineups with both services (although the Dish Sirius radio channels were better than whatever service U-Verse uses). I have noticed an occasional stutter with the U-Verse stream, but I also had occasional stutters with Dish (more frequent during heavy rain, which obviously won't be a problem with U-Verse), so that's a wash. I initially had some sporadic audio issues with my Toshiba HDTV hooked to U-Verse DVR via HDMI cable, but fiddling with the Toshiba settings resolved the problem.
DVR: Dish has a GREAT DVR, with really good program guide info and scheduling of recordings. U-Verse DVR is close (including a 30 second advance/7 second rewind popularized by Dish), but scheduling series recording is a bit buggy (Dish was GREAT at recording new shows only; U-Verse DVR seems to miss some new shows, so it's wise to set it to record all). The ability to schedule a recording over the web is a big plus for U-Verse, though. Both systems allow for a remote television to watch recorded DVR programs.
Streams: U-Verse allows for four video streams (2 HD) at once at this time (that's an increase over what was initially offered, and could easily increase if AT&T fattens their pipe). Dish two-room DVR allows for two streams total plus one OTA stream if you have an antenna connected. Advantage U-Verse.
Internet: I signed up for the U-Verse 6M/1M service (they now offer 10M and 18M down). The connection has been rock solid and right up to spec, with consistent speeds and consistent ping times at different times of the day. The 2Wire residential gateway provided by AT&T is highly configurable -- after suffering a few wifi disconnect/reconnects, I changed the broadcast channel and it has worked well since. The Comcast Powerboost feature was nice, but the U-Verse overall performance seems more consistent/stable. And for people who want to pay for much more speed, it's available.
Installation: My installation window was 2-4 pm. The tech called just before 3pm and said he was on his way. He arrived at 3pm, scoped out my wiring situation, and by 4:30pm, the install was complete and I had a working system. The tech tapped into my existing coax cable wiring, which is effectively being used as the IPTV network through the townhouse, so my install was pretty easy (no new wiring required). The tech was pleasant, and it was interesting chatting with him about the technology.
Price: The U-Verse package beats the Dish/Comcast combo by about $20/month, which is pretty sweet. There was also a $200 rebate promotion when I signed up.
As I said above, I'm really pleased with the switch so far (although I had no real complaints with Dish/Comcast). I'll update the post if any issues pop up along the way.
Posted by Kevin Whited @ 11/23/08 12:25 | Tech | Technorati |
11 November 2008
Ah, WM
There's a Windows Mobile email patch out.
From Microsoft, of course.
I navigate to the CAB file with my smartphone, and start the download/install.
I get the familiar warning that basically says the program is from an untrusted publisher, do I want to proceed.
The patch is FROM MICROSOFT. For its mail program. In its mobile operating system.
You gotta love that.
Posted by Kevin Whited @ 11/11/08 09:11 | Tech | Technorati |
14 June 2008
Tech Saturday
Why does everything have to break at once?
I have an OLD Compaq desktop machine that has long served as the household music server/music burner machine. It is networked, runs Squeezecenter, and is hooked into my stereo, so I can listen to tunes at home or remotely. The old gal still has enough power to handle whatever music tasks I throw at her. But of late, the music hard drive has had some issues. The music is all backed up, but I've known for a few weeks now the hard drive needed to be replaced. So the replace/rebuild got done over the past couple of days. No big deal. The old gal is running just fine again, which is cool.
While doing that bit of maintenance on Friday, I thought it would be a good idea to check up on the health of the Thinkpad's drive. Ugh. A backup revealed a file with errors. CHKDSK revealed more problems, some of which it didn't seem to want to repair. And the drive failed one of PC-Doctor's five tests -- an early sign of a failing drive. A call to IBM/Lenovo support confirmed my failing-drive diagnosis, and in less than ten minutes, the support call was resolved with the tech promising a replacement drive that might arrive by Monday but certainly by Tuesday (he wasn't just blowing smoke -- two previous hardware support calls resulted in replacement parts being shipped that fast, which is why my next laptop will be a Lenovo Thinkpad).
Cool enough, but I have been wanting a bigger hard drive anyway. So I tracked down a compatible drive (not such an easy task, as it turns out, for the T43) at MicroCenter, installed the thing (one screw removed, two screws on the drive cage removed, cage attached to new drive with the two screws, snapped into place, screw reattached -- it's SO easy to work on a Thinkpad), restored the saved drive image from an external drive with ThinkVantage Rescue and Recovery, and the machine is back in business. And this drive runs quite a bit cooler than the original, according to the temp sensor. When the replacement for the original arrives, I'll probably image it with my current backup, just in case, and store it.
Both music server and Thinkpad are working normally, finally. Not the most exciting Saturday, but a little preventive maintenance sure beats losing 40GB of music or a bunch of stuff on the Thinkpad.
Posted by Kevin Whited @ 06/14/08 21:36 | Tech | Technorati |
11 April 2008
New Thinkpads! *drool*
Gizmodo posts some juicy rumors about coming Lenovo offerings, which will allegedly be available in early June.
There is all sorts of stuff to drool over, but as a loyal owner of a nearly three-year-old T43, I'm most interested in the freshening of the T series laptops.
It looks like the LED backlighting that found its way into the stunning (but too pricey for me) X300 will find its way into the new T series laptops also. So will a 9-cell battery that takes up the space of the old 6-cells.
And if they're available in early June, as Gizmodo suggests, that means Windows XP can still be ordered on the machine (no Vista PoS, yay!) -- and that will be about the time my T43 hits the three year mark, my warranty expires, and I was planning on looking for a new T machine anyway.
Sweet!
Posted by Kevin Whited @ 04/11/08 21:56 | Tech | Technorati |
29 December 2007
Have you backed up your blog today?
Hosting Matters had another hardware failure on the server that hosts blogHOUSTON a few days ago.
As a result of their dead hard drive and one faulty backup, they had to restore an older backup, and a few days' worth of data was lost.
Since that's the second time such data loss has happened, that meant it was time to investigate backup solutions (and maybe, eventually, a new host), so that I'll have some confidence in having a backup no more than 24 hours old if things crash again. Of course, playing with scripts takes away from posting time at a time when travel, work, and Cougar athletics events are all keeping me occupied, but hey -- stuff happens, and rarely happens at convenient times.
As it turns out, this guy has a very helpful page for people who run sites powered by mySQL databases and want a fairly automated backup system. I was able to modify his script to back up two databases (the weblog and the forum) each day via a cron job, and to email the files to a gmail account set up specifically for that purpose. So that *should* ensure that I always have a backup no older than 24 hours. Maybe. Like I said, stuff sometimes happens.
Posted by Kevin Whited @ 12/29/07 22:14 | Tech | Technorati |
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