We have now had U-verse for about six weeks. For the most part, I will say that we like the U-verse TV experience, but there are some pros and cons.
Background
The most obvious difference between U-verse and any type of cable set-top box (STB) setup is that U-verse is IPTV (Internet Protocol Television). A quick, over-simplified description is something like this:
With cable, all the channels are continuously being piped through the line and the STB’s tuner or TV’s built-in tuner picks which one to display - sort of like broadcast radio or television signals are always in the air regardless of how many antennas are tuned to them. Because of this, you can have as many televisions (or STBs) as you wish tuned to as many channels as the cable provider offers. The down side of this is that the provider can only offer as many channels as can fit. This becomes even more significant with the advent of HD. HD signals occupy more bandwidth than SD, so every HD channel added to the lineup is at the expense of multiple SD channels. Note that this is less limiting now with digital television signals piped over wider bandwidth.
IPTV does not continuously pipe all channels like cable. Instead, it streams only the channel(s) requested at any point in time. The tuning requires a U-verse STB, so built-in tuners, TiVos, and other tuners are not supported. The streams require a good bit of bandwidth, so (currently) only four simultaneous incoming streams are supported. For most households, this is not a serious limitation - especially if most shows are viewed from DVR recordings - but it could come into play if multiple simultaneous broadcasts are desired (on multiple TVs and/or DVR slots). On the other hand, since only the requested channels are streaming in at any point, there is no technical limit to the number of channels (or other sources) that AT&T can offer. It’s comparable to the availability of web sites: millions of sites, but your internet connection may limit how many you can simultaneously download. The most significant application of this factor is that the HD version of every channel is available.
Experience Comparison
The user experience includes many areas:
Linear Television
The video quality is excellent - almost all the time. We recently purchased one of the best quality televisions available (Samsung 55” LED), making it very easy to analyze the quality. We have noticed a little bit of occasional pixilation. I assume it is associated with the decoding, but it’s rare enough to be acceptable. Note that the quality of U-verse far exceeds that of DirecTV, whose additional layer of compression/decompression constantly adds even worse pixilation.
The audio quality is also good. It’s 5.1 surround sound. I’m no audiophile, but it seems to be as good as any other sources. The only real problem that we’ve observed is the occasional audio drop-outs: tiny deletions that sound similar to a scratch on a vinyl record album. Their frequency seems to have decreased since installation. In fact, I can’t even remember the last occurrence.
As mentioned above, U-verse offers HD versions of every channel. The wider selection of HD is a big plus. All of the streams for all STBs come through the Residential Gateway, so the limit of four simultaneous streams (2HD + 2SD) apply to the entire household. For a child-free household like ours, this is not a problem.
TV User Interface
This is an area to which I pay a lot of attention. It’s what I do for a living. I’m familiar with the U-verse UI from the perspectives of both user and designer. I have experience with TiVo, the default Motorola UI, DirecTV, and now U-verse. I will say that I still prefer that of TiVo. If you know me, you are aware that I am a Mac user. I recognize that modern versions of Windows have good interfaces, but not quite as desirable and user-friendly as that of the Mac. I would compare the TiVo to the Mac, U-verse to Windows 7, DirecTV to Windows 3.1, and the Motorola UI to… well… the Commodore Pet I played with in 1980.
When comparing U-verse to the TiVo, there are several subtle differences:
- Navigation controls: TiVo’s controls are more likely to do what the user wants, often as a result of making functionality available in multiple ways. Pressing OK or RIGHT will typically select an item from a menu. Rather than making a universal decision about which one is appropriate, TiVo provides both. The U-verse remote control has a BACK key that functions like that of a browser, but TiVo provides the same functionality with the LEFT key, allowing the user to do more with just the directional keys. Little things like these improve the TiVo experience, giving it a slight advantage.
- Sound effects: TiVo’s are so significant that even people who have never used a TiVo recognize them. With U-verse, the sound effects are optional - turned off by default. When they’re enabled, they prove helpful - especially for former TiVo users - but they don’t work consistently. Navigating up and down within a list doesn’t always trigger the sounds, but sometimes it does. The STB in our bedroom seems to do a better job than the one in the living room. I think it may have something to do with the living room STB being set to 5.1 surround sound.
- Visual appearance: Of course, this is a subjective judgement and perhaps I hold U-verse to a higher standard because I work with those making some decisions about the visual appearance. I do believe the U-verse interface is too blue. I would like to see some contrasting and complementary colors.
- Informational structure: The menu structures of both platforms are similar. The top-level menu for TiVo is a vertical menu like all others. Each menu level is “parallel” making them more obvious. U-verse has a horizontal menu whose sub-items are displayed in a vertical menu below the horizontal one. While this is handy, it is not as intuitive. I believe that, over time, users become more familiar, and therefore more comfortable, with it. The simplicity of the TiVo structure also makes it easy to know where you are and how to get deeper in or back out. The horizontal menu in U-verse confuses this.
DVR
Lexie and I watch recorded shows almost exclusively. Even when we’re watching “live shows,” we record the show and then watch it slightly delayed so that we can rewind if necessary and, most importantly, fast-forward through commercials. For us, the DVR experience is key. We had an SD TiVo in the bedroom and an HD TiVo in the living room. That gave us the ability to simultaneously record two HD shows and one SD show. Sometimes we would record the same shows on both devices (one in HD and the other in SD) so we could have the option of viewing the show in either room. Enter U-verse.
Viewing
U-verse provides Total-House DVR, a great feature that allows a single DVR to record and then any STB in the house to view the recordings. Since there is the inherent limitation on the quantity of incoming streams, the single 4-tuner DVR is all that is needed, anyway. What makes this so nice is that we only need to record shows once and then we can watch them from whichever STB we choose. We can start in one room and finish in another. The HD recordings show up fine on the SD screen.
The audio and video quality from DVR playback is very good. If there were never a need to rewind or fast-forward, it would be as good as TiVo, but obviously that is not the case. The biggest drawbacks to the U-verse viewing experience are in this area.
- The view while rewinding or fast-forwarding in U-verse is not smooth and continuous as it is with TiVo. This makes it much harder to beging playing at specific point (beginning of scene, end of commercial break, etc.).
- When the video begins playing, the audio is delayed. It usually takes a few seconds for the audio to kick in (at which time, it is synchronized with the video). That means that, upon resuming play after fast-forwarding or rewinding, you have to try to silently view the last few seconds of the previous event or commercial to insure that sound is resumed at the desired point.
- The REPLAY key on the remote steps back a few seconds in the recording, but because of the audio delay described above, you have to hit REPLAY multiple times to get back far enough for the sound to resume as desired.
These three drawbacks exaggerate each other. It may be only a few seconds here or there, but with a DVR, this is a big part of the comfort and enjoyment of the user experience.
Programming
Scheduling and managing recordings with U-verse has pros and cons. Conceptually, it is very similar to the process for TiVo. Scheduling is slightly easier with the TiVo interface, but there’s not much difference in searching for or selecting a show and setting it to record. With series recordings, TiVo has a single listing of all series and allows you to set the order of priority. Such a list doesn’t exist in U-verse (yet). When I first began entering series into U-verse, I couldn’t figure out what to do. It appeared that whichever series I entered first would take priority over those entered later and that I wouldn’t be able to change the order. This is was the con.
Eventually, I entered a program that conflicted with another previously scheduled and had the opportunity to use the Conflict Resolution feature. That allows you to rearrange the priority for that particular occurance of the conflicting programs. Later, I realized that the list of scheduled programs is slightly easier to access and review than that of TiVo. The best part about this is that any conflicting items remain in that list, but are displayed with a “conflict” icon. You can select the items to resolve the conflict. On the TiVo, it required going into a poorly labeled submenu to see what wasn’t going to be recorded. Resolving those conflicts took much more effort and you’re not as likely to know they even exist.
The best was still to come. The next thing I discovered was Web Remote Access. This is, by far, the best web scheduling interface I’ve seen. In fact, I don’t even use the TV interface for scheduling and conflict resolution. Even when I’m at home, I do that with my laptop because it’s much faster and easier - and doesn’t require me to interrupt whatever we might be viewing. I can even use it to clear out existing recordings that I don’t expect to watch. The DVR hard drive is large, but I still don’t want it to fill up with dozens of Office reruns.
Applications
AT&T has provided some interactive applications that take advantage of the IP nature of IPTV. As expected, my favorite one is Weather On Demand. I use it almost every evening or morning to know what to expect. There are also some other applications that provide multiple views of live programming, information about awards ceremonies, Olympics, and more. I think this is a barely-tapped area for product enhancement. Picture the iPhone with only the default Apple-developed applications. If the decision-makers at AT&T will ever open up the platform to third-party developers, U-verse will be overwhelmingly successful. That’s a subject for another day.
