Which is better, or more precisely, which isn't worse

It's not that I hated Time Warner Cable. In fact, in a lot of ways I kind of liked them. For several years, I had the Scientific Atlanta 8000HD DVR box, which, after many updates, was a pretty decent piece of equipment. Then, after my second one died (as hard-drive based equipment is bound to do), they gave me the 8300HDC. This is the worst consumer electronics product I've ever used, and my days with TWC were numbered. And along came AT&T.

When TWC first started offering HD, it had local channels, and more extra HD channels than satellite. And in reality, that's all I care about. The satellite companies have quickly leapfrogged TWC's offerings, to the point now where cable looks ancient by comparison.

Getting satellite where I am would have been a hassle, so I kept going with what I had. After all, the DVR (the 8000HD, that is) worked pretty well, and the signal looked great. Best of all, it outputted the native resolution of the program. "Lost" in 720p anyone?

But the 8300HDC was so bad, I had to dump it. Here's why: It was designed by morons. Lets start with the simplest and most obvious blunder. There is no way to tell it what programs you want to record if there is a conflict. With the 8000HD, you could prioritize shows, via a list, to give the box a hierarchy of what to record if a conflict should arise. "Battlestar Galactica" is at the top, so record that over all else.

The 8300HDC had no way of doing this, so it would sometimes record "Lost" and sometimes the re-run of "Mythbusters" I've seen a dozen times. Being able to count on a DVR to record programs when you're not at home is, you know, kind of the point. If it saw an immediate conflict, it would ask you about it. If you're not there, it decides for you, seemingly at random.

Then there is the fact that it doesn't delete programs… ever. If you fill up the hard drive, it just stops recording. So you have to delete every…single…program manually. Great fun after a week away. You also can't tell it to only record one instance of a show, say at a certain time on a certain day. All you can tell it is new or repeat, the tag for which isn't always correct. Plan on lots of duplicates, which, of course, you have to manually delete.

When I received a mailing that fiber optic based U-verse was available, I signed up immediately.

U-verse
The physical difference between AT&T's U-verse and Verizon's FiOS is that the latter brings the fiber optic "pipe" to, or pretty much to, your house. They call this "fiber to the curb." It's very expensive, given that you have to put in all this new fancy fiber optic cable everywhere, and to every house. The payoff is nearly unlimited bandwidth. U-verse, on the other hand, is fiber to the general area.

They deliver fiber to a neighborhood (or "fiber to the node"), and then it's copper wire from there. For example, my main hub box is across the street and up a half a block. All the residential buildings around me share this box. To be clear, we're not sharing the bandwidth (like Internet over cable), just this junction box.

AT&T's way is cheaper in the short term, though potentially doesn't have quite the bandwidth potential that FiOS has. Regardless, it's still a lot of bandwidth. For example, one U-verse package gets you 10 mbps download speed, plus duel HDTV feeds, and two more SD feeds. While this is less than what FiOS offers (upwards of 50 mbps), it's still more download speed then you'll likely ever use (and that's coming from a gamer). FiOS upload speeds are much faster, across the board.

On the actual TV side, U-verse is Internet protocol television (IPTV). In a way you can think of it as really high quality Internet video. You tell the server you want program "A" it sends your box program "A" as packets of data, kind of like you were watching a video on YouTube. So your box is only getting the specific program or programs you're watching or recording (4 SD or 2 SD and 2 HD channels at once).

For comparison, cable (and FiOS, incidentally) just send you all the channels all the time, and you and your box just pick one to watch. Think of it this way, with IPTV (U-verse) you're drinking everything that's coming out of the garden hose, where with cable and FiOS, you're scooping a garden hose sized amount out of a river. There are pros and cons for each system. Some of the reported cons to U-verse's IPTV was slow channel changes, which I haven't experienced. In fact, it changes channels faster than my cable.

Also, there were reports that because U-verse is biased towards video, online gaming ping times were affected. I haven't found this to be an issue, as my pings with Counter-Strike were roughly the same after U-verse. They were perhaps slightly higher (15 versus 23 or so), but the difference wasn't noticeable, and could depend on many other factors.

Installation
It took the technician about two hours to clean up the phone jacks and get everything set up for U-verse. He was friendly and answered my numerous questions. The DVR is a Motorola VIP1216. The menus are easy to navigate, and they move quickly. The latter is not something you'd typically think about with a DVR, but it's welcome when it's there.

Sadly, on setup, one of my few favorite features from the Scientific Atlanta boxes isn't on the Moto. You have to choose either 1080i or 720p output, meaning you can't output the native resolution of the program material. While a bummer with 720p content (most people should pick 1080i), this is an annoyance with 480i channels. I think it's safe to say my $12,000 reference projector has a better scaler in it than this giveaway DVR. Many TVs have decent scalers in them as well.

Worse, many TVs don't let you adjust the aspect ratio of HD content. If your TV can't, you're stuck watching any upconverted 480i letterboxed material (think most Sci-fi and Discovery Channel shows) with black bars on the top, bottom, and both sides. There is a zoom feature built into the VIP1216, but it doesn't work very well.

You can schedule recordings over the Internet from anywhere. For those of us that travel a lot, and find random shows to watch on hotel cable, this is great. Or if your co-workers are talking about some cool new show, you can set up a record right then. You also get built in picture-in-picture, which is really cool. While scrolling through the channel guide, the channel you're on is in the background, while the channel your scanning in the guide is in the PiP. Coolness.

Of all the HD channels offered by AT&T there is inexplicably no Sci-Fi HD, and inexcusably no PBS HD. (Update: On July 11, Sci-Fi HD was added. Update#2: Looks like they snuck in the local PBS channel in HD when no one was looking.)

Compare and contrast: Cable v. Fiber
Using a component switcher, I was able to A/B a feed from each box using the same channels. I started with Discovery HD Theater, as it typically looks excellent. After going back a few dozen times, the result was unmistakable: the cable was noticeably sharper. If I had to put a subjective number on it, I'd say about 10-15% sharper overall. Fine details like facial hair were clearly more defined on the cable feed, while the U-verse version of the same channel was softer.

Now before we all go and yell that fiber is softer than cable, there are unfortunately a number of caveats. The first is that even though this is the same channel, it is a different signal. Cable is MPEG-2, U-verse is H.264 (MPEG-4). So even if you take all other variables out, this means that the signal is being re-encoded. For that matter, even the MPEG-2 signal from the cable company is surely being re-compressed at TWC.

Each provider can adjust the amount of compression each channel has, and can change that amount at will. So just because the signal was softer during my testing doesn't mean it will always be. I say that last one just to cover my ass, as there is no way to watch and compare every channel all the time. Yes, it could mean that the Moto box itself just has a softer component output (though not likely, as I'll get to).

While I did do my testing over component, I tested the HDMI outputs of both boxes separately (sorry, no HDMI switcher) and compared them to the same box's component signal. While the HDMI output of the 8300HDC was perhaps slightly sharper than the component, the HDMI output of the VIP1216 was pretty much the same. This more or less rules out the box itself being the cause of the softness as there wouldn't be a logical reason why the HDMI output would have a softened image.

Other channels, those that my cable feed didn't have, also seemed quite soft. Discovery HD (not HD Theater) and others often seemed to have barely better resolution than SD, even when they weren't obviously showing upconverted SD content (which seems to be far too often). On channels that have higher amounts of compression, like Showtime HD, the difference between cable and U-verse was less noticeable. It's worth noting the there aren’t more artifacts on U-verse, it's just a little softer.

It's also worth noting that the SD channels, for the most part, look far better on U-verse than the same channels on TWC. Sci-Fi on TWC is nearly unwatchable, but on AT&T it looks as good as SD can.

The Verdict
So what conclusions can we get from this? Despite using H.264 compression, it seems that AT&T is still compressing their HD signals as much as is feasible to fit as many HD channels as possible into their lineup. This "quantity over quality" approach is clearly the best marketing strategy. While we enthusiasts may lament the fact that the image is softer, the vast majority of consumers (sadly) think that HD is HD. "It all looks the same, right?"

Fiber has a lot of bandwidth, so it is possible that down the road the bitrate will be increased, but that is highly unlikely. Also, I did my testing on a 100-inch screen with a high-end 1080p DLP projector. On smaller screens, like the 42-inchers most people seem to have, the difference between the two will be less (but not, not) noticeable.

That all said, the choice between some extra detail versus four times the HD channels and a better box is not a hard one. Especially as I doubled my Internet speed as well and all for about $40 less per month. So I'm happy, though still looking for DVR and HD perfection.

Footnote: I had U-verse installed on a Thursday. I suffered my first crash of the VIP1216 on Sunday, three days later. It took three soft resets (holding down the front power button) and six hard reboots (pulling the power plug) before I was able to use the box and hard drive again. Three days after that it crashed again. The helpful tech support sent a tech over the next day to replace the box. It took him about 20 minutes to get it up and running (no plug and play here, you have to have the box okayed with the main office).

It was only after the tech left when I found out the coolest (though slightly creepy) aspect to this service. While I did lose all the shows I had recorded (obviously, the hard drive was in the dead box), all the shows I had scheduled to record were downloaded into the new box. So I didn't have to spend the hours clicking away setting up all the shows I want to record. Now that's something. Having all my scheduled recordings sitting on some server at AT&T=creepy. Ma Bell is watching you.

So while I'm happy overall with U-verse, the VIP1216 doesn’t sit in a warm place in my heart just yet. I haven't had good luck with DVR replacements, so I'm not sure if I would want a new model (when and if one becomes available). My new VIP1216 hasn't died yet (it's been about 2 weeks), so here's hoping...