Good news,
U-verse fans, you'll be upgrading from the current 2 HD / 2 SD video stream system to three live HD streams in 2009. The (potentially) bad news is that comes with the price of additional
compression, as AT&T's IPTV service squeezes its MPEG-4 video streams down to 5 Mbps from a current size of 6-8 Mbps, according to CTO John Donovan. Count another bonus as the
Total Home DVR will throw as many as seven video streams around the house, up from the current five. With a last mile DSL strategy that gives it less breathing room than Verizon's
FiOS, there's only one way to add more streams, but is there going to be a
PQ price to pay? We'll find out soon, and don't expect AT&T to stop there,
Multichannel News quotes Donovan saying encoders currently in development could reduce bandwidth even further.
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
Jeremy W @ Sep 22nd 2008 1:45AM
My god. U-verse HD already looks like hell, and they want to make it even worse! AT&T obviously don't care about getting people who care about picture quality in the least bit.
kcmurphy88 @ Sep 22nd 2008 2:33AM
And the real killer here is that on-the-fly compression is much worse than production-time compression. A movie on HBO or a TV series episode that's compressed by the provider can be fairly good even with heavy compression -- lots of time to do 50 or 100 cycles to make the bitrate low. But when you do it at transmission time you do it in real time and at is often atrifact city.
AT&T will eventually have to give up on the DSL thing -- the copper last mile has got to go. Maybe they don't worry about Verizon overbuilding, but DirecTV will beat their quality every time.
Stewart Gordon @ Sep 22nd 2008 3:10AM
I was looking forward to changing, but no pun intended, Comcast is
looking better every day.
rock99rock @ Sep 22nd 2008 6:02PM
And im trying to leave comcast! What a crazy world we live in.
GhostDoggy @ Sep 22nd 2008 6:38AM
AT&T is evil. Of course, we are talking about SBC (Southwestern Bell Company), but it makes no difference. The decision-makers in AT&T are not videophiles, and video content is not their future so why not abuse the what little subscriber base (ahem, cowsumers) they have?
If Best Buy can abuse the dumb, so too can AT&T.
kcmurphy88 @ Sep 22nd 2008 3:04PM
Yeah -- folks who've been watching stretched SD will think their HD just got a lot better.
leg01pd @ Sep 22nd 2008 7:12AM
I've been very disappointed with the picture quality they have now, if it gets worse, I'll probably go back to Cox Cable. One of the reasons I joined U-verse was to see if I could get better HD pictures, but it has been worse than Cox, with less reliable service.
T-bone @ Sep 22nd 2008 10:10AM
Is this just speculation or based on some kind of fact? Can you provide a source that says they are changing compression ratio or is this just FUD?
After all endadget HD is owned by U-verse's competitor....TWC.
Denny @ Sep 22nd 2008 10:45AM
...provide a source? Click on the "Read" link! Do you not know how this website works?? Engadget ALWAYS provides its source... next time actually READ the article where they reference their source before posting ignorant comments...
T-bone @ Sep 22nd 2008 11:24AM
thanks for the smart ass response, I really appreciate it.
No where in the 'source' did it say that picture. quality would suffer as this website implies. Probably because they are owned by TWC. this site is so biased it is not funny.
At least they don't try to have any amount of journalism, so it is at least evident they are biased.
looseinthedeuce @ Sep 22nd 2008 2:18PM
Um, of course the picture quality will suffer. U-verse already looks bad. Added compression does not improve picture quality. I'll stick with my 15mb/s MPEG2 source material from the cable company.
Evan @ Sep 22nd 2008 5:15PM
Picture quality is very closely tied to bitrate. Other factors remaining equal, reducing bitrate necessarily means lower picture quality. And there are no other factors they could change that could offset the reduction (they are already using MPEG-4, and they are re-encoding in real-time).
J @ Sep 26th 2008 4:07AM
You guys make me sick. All you do is bitch and bitch and bitch and bitch. So go back to the competitor. I'm tired of trying to fix your basic problems (that have NOTHING to do with our product) while you just bitch and I'm totally sick of it! Go back to the competitor. Pay more! See that they have their own share of problems or SHUT UP and BE NICE!
DallasJayhawk @ Sep 22nd 2008 10:20AM
Tap the brakes folks. Let's get real for just a second.
I just came from HD DirecTV and found the PQ to be very good.
U-verse PQ looks identical to me on my 42 Panasonic Plasma viewed from a normal viewing distance of 6 feet away. A combination of bigger picture and closer viewing "could" make a difference but I think most of the negative PQ comments here are completely unrealistic for most consumers including myself.
I have enjoyed the U-verse service in the two months that I've had it and things are getting even better thanks to the Total Home DVR, increase in simultaneous HD streams, low price, month to month contract and zero equipment to purchase. I've got VOD and DVR access on every TV and didn't have to pay for the equipment. At this point the only company that's competing with AT&T is Verizon FIOS.
Denny @ Sep 22nd 2008 10:51AM
when you say you have no equipment to 'buy', do you mean you don't have to actually purchase the stb's for yourself like sometimes with satellite (your previous provider), or do you mean you don't pay anything at all such as monthly rental/leasing fees for the stb's and dvr service? I'm only asking because I am curious, I have Verizon FiOS and we have to pay monthly fees for our stb's and for a dvr.
DallasJayhawk @ Sep 22nd 2008 11:16AM
Just to clarify, that I meant that I didn't have to purchase the HD set top boxes & HD DVR's like you have to do from DirecTV or DISH. I don't remember all the details of my bill but I'm probably paying a STB rental fee as well as an HD surcharge or $10/mo.
To clarify my setup on PQ, I am 1500 feet from the node which is may help PQ. The routing inside my house is done over the coax that DirecTV installed a couple of years ago instead of what many consider superior CAT5 ethernet wire. So coax distribution within my home isn't hurting my PQ. I also have the set top box set up for 720p which is native for my plasma and I'm using HDMI cable.
When the installer first set up my set, I wasn't too impressed because I was watching Olympic sprinting and didn't realize that it was on SD standard definition. Once I learned how to get to the HD channels I was content. HD channels start at channel 1000 and go up but when you first turn on your box it defaults to the SD channels 4, 5, etc...
I have found the SD PQ to be very good for movies and TV shows but I won't watch sports with anything other than HD.
Those who commented above about poor PQ should detail their setups (distance from node, coax/CAT5 in house distributioin, HDMI or component cables from STB to TV, STB HDTV setting 720P/1080i, TV picture size and viewing distance).
michael @ Sep 22nd 2008 7:03PM
At what point is highly compressed HD no longer HD?
Does anyone else here smell a class action lawsuit?
TrentD @ Sep 22nd 2008 7:29PM
The CEA really should step in and define a minimum bitrate (based on codec and resolution) that can be marketed as HD.
I know it would be hard, and it would need to be constantly revised as compression tools improve, but this is ridiculous. Ugly HD does not equal increased adoption.
Audballz @ Sep 22nd 2008 7:12PM
Yeah people commenting on bad Picture quality might be viewing Uverse on cheap HD TVs. I have a Panasonic Plasma, Old school Sony XBR HD Tube, and a cheap Sanyo LCDTV. I flip from my ATSC tuner to Uverse and I don't see a noticeable difference at all, but my cheap LCDTV does. You get what you pay for.....
GrammrCheckr @ Sep 23rd 2008 12:51PM
Since when does "more efficient MPEG-4 compression" necessarily equate to "worse PQ"? I realize that this is SOMETIMES, and perhaps USUALLY, the case, but it's not NECESSARILY so.
For instance, 10 years ago, when there was no lossless codec for audio, the idea of compressing the audio meant that the sound quality would suffer. Now you can compress the audio substantially without any degradation whatsoever in sound quality.
Perhaps the technologies they're looking at "in the labs" is further compression without resultant loss in PQ.
I'm not saying that this is the case one way or the other (and quite frankly, if I were a betting man, I would say that the next round of compression WILL degrade PQ slightly), but I AM saying that just the fact that they will compress the signal further does not GUARANTEE a poorer picture.
GrammrCheckr @ Sep 23rd 2008 12:59PM
TrentD,
Actually, I'd bet ugly HD DOES equal increased adoption, as long as there is more of it, so that they can put in their marketing "We have more HD than competitor XXX". The masses look at the number of HD channels, not whether they're HD or HD-lite. Only a few of us can actually discern, and even fewer care about, the relatively minor PQ differences.
Audballz @ Sep 23rd 2008 3:19PM
If they are just going to do 3 HD, why don't they just raise the 25mbps cap to an extra 8 mbps so they wouldn't have to buy more advanced encoders? Makes sense if they were going to do 5 HD. Remember 25 mbps is not the ultimate limit, it's the cap that AT&T put. I know the max for VDSL is somewhere like 55 mbps. I really don't care either way, no matter which provider you go to they all compress. If I wanted to see a full bitrate show or movie, I'll buy the Blu Ray.
chuck @ Sep 24th 2008 4:37PM
I have had U-verse for about six months now. I switched after Comcast (in Houston) massively increased their compression on their HD channels. I must say that currently, U-verse HD quality is awesome for me, and I am ~2200' from the node. Granted, sometimes sports games or other live events get a few artifacts here and there, but that's usually at the source, not the provider. I have thoroughly enjoyed U-verse thus far and I doubt a switch from 6-7Mbps to 5 is going to change much (except getting an extra HD stream!). If it does mess up the quality, I guess it doesn't matter. We don't have much other choice. At least not until FiOS comes to Houston.
J @ Sep 26th 2008 4:12AM
"I didn't have this problem with comcast/dish/wow/some other stupid competitor". Oh yeah, well, we've got to fix YOUR damn POTS (Plain old telephone system) on your stupid 500 year old piece of garbage house with crappy wiring in it before this can work the way it's supposed to. SO, PLEASE, SHUT THE F*CK UP AND QUIT YOUR WHINING so that we can fix YOUR stupid problems so YOU can be the picky little lazy @$$ that you wanna be, getting fatter and fatter by the day as you sit on your couch and watch other people act because your life sucks.
dcon @ Sep 27th 2008 11:52PM
dude, why dont you freaking relax? youre starting to remind me of The Cable Guy -- not a good look for you, ya psychotic installer.
Steve @ Oct 12th 2008 4:05PM
I just switched from DirecTV, and for the me the picture quality of U-Verse is a giant step backwards. We have 3 Sony XBR5 panels in our house and the difference in picture quality is striking. That said, I love the whole house DVR feature, true video on demand, and the fast changing of channels. I would say though that if the U-Verse picture quality does not improve, much less deteriorates, I will probably go back to DirecTV. My understanding is that DirecTV does not compress their HD (I could be wrong on this).