Weise's World

Well, I FINALLY decided to upgrade to HDTV service. Obviously I've had TVs capable of HDTV for quite some time and it is used with the XBox and the PS3 for games and movies. But with the upcoming TV season plus the Olympics next year I really wanted to get HDTV up and running.
 
It seems pretty straight forward. I've been a DirecTv customer for 8 years, so I just call and order it... Come to find out, though, that existing customers are treated like crap. To upgrade to HDTV they require you to pay about $300 in equipment - but you aren't buying the equipment, you're just paying for it... You also have pay a montly lease fee, etc... I don't care about the monthly fees, but I'm not paying a hundreds of dollars to upgrade to HDTV!
 
So I called AT&T regarding U-Verse and they would install everything for free, the have 1080i service, just like DirecTv, Total Home DVR, etc... The monthly rate was in-line with DirecTv. This was a very viable option. Reading reviews the early reviews were negative, but more and more the HDTV is getting better reviews. But I would prefer to stay with current provider and there are references online that you could contact the retention department and they would get you everything for free --- but that they had stopped that practice and would only discount it. It was worth a try, I contacted DirecTv, talked with retention and they offered another $100 off, so $200 for the equipment. Bummer.
 
I called AT&T on Monday, they came out on Tuesday and installed the service. Picture looked great, everything seemed fine. Setup my recordings. Went to watch the recordings last night - no go. They said they were recording, but didn't      Double Bummer!! Reset/restarted all the devices, no go. Crap. It was midnight, but I called Tech Support - they were going to have me reset everything, but I insisted I already did and we moved on. They had me do a hard-reset of the DVR. That did the trick. Now everything works!! But I could also see the recording capacity - I'm supposed to have at least 65 hours of HD, but it only shows 45!! UGH! I have an OLD DVR box!!! Tech Support told me to call billing on Wednesday morning.
  
So, I called billing to work through it, they transferred me to tech support - DSL support. They then transferred me to UVerse support. After working with them they transferred me to another support group - but I was disconnected while waiting... Called UVerse Tech support and after working with them AGAIN they needed to get this over to Sales Support but this time the tech support rep did everything, staying on hold and describing the issue with Sales Support and the end result - they are mailing me one of the new DVRs      Some good news!!
 
So I'm happy with the HDTV that UVerse is giving me... The picture has been great, the DVR is good (now that it's working). It's not TiVo, but I wouldn't be getting a TiVo DVR with DirecTv either... Having made my choice I go to cancel my DirecTv service... And NOW the retention rep offers me a free upgrade to HDTV with a Whole Home DVR and second receiver... UGH! If only they had offered it before, too bad - AT&T is already installed and I'm no longer satisified with the DirecTv service... Oh well, their loss...
 
[Update: Got the new DVR, had to call tech support at 2am to get it working, but they got it provisioned properly and working... And I had 80+ hours of HD recordings possible - which si great since I was only expecting 65!! Been running it for a week now and I love it. Working great, no issues so far!]