Today was a long time coming.  I haven’t had cable / satellite service for the past 7 months because DirecTV decided they didn’t want to service my home with HD service — so I canceled all of my service with them.  I’ve been dealing with over the air (OTA) DTV.  It hasn’t been bad, but it is incredibly limited; only 5 or 6 English language channels.  After 7 months I finally received word that AT&T Uverse is available in my area — I immediately jumped on it.

I placed my order on Tuesday and had an 8 – 10 AM install window just two days later.  I decided to go with their Uverse TV 450 package with their 18 mbit/s internet package, I left off the phone service since I already carry several cell phones.  Thursday rolls around and I’m at home waiting for the installer.  I selected the first available install time for the day hoping that I wouldn’t be caught up in a later day install where there’s generally delays.  10 AM rolls by and the installer still hasn’t arrived.  I end up calling dispatch to see where the installer is.  A nice gentlemen informs me that it looks like my install slipped between the cracks and he was attempting to find a free installer.  20 minutes later an installer calls me and will be at my home in 30 minutes.

Sure enough he shows up, very polite and gets straight to work.  Finds out that the initial work he did on the pole needed some tweaking so he took off for 20 minutes.  Comes back, everything checks out and then starts to plug in the gear.  In approx. 45 minutes he has everything up and running, gives me a quick run down on the features, hands me his personal cell phone number in case something isn’t up to snuff and takes off to his next job.  I must say the TV quality is very nice.  HD is crisp and clear — no pixel tearing.  Video on demand is smooth and works as expected and the DVR functionality on the receiver and online is seamless.

Next I took the internet for a spin.  Amazingly I was able to pull down 20 mbit/s and upload hovered around 2 mbit/s.  As advertised speeds and it seems very consistent.  I downloaded a weekly video series this evening and was amazed with the speed at which the file came down off the net.  Steady at 1.5 – 1.6 MB/s.

Overall I am very impressed on day 1 of AT&T Uverse.  If you have Uverse available in your area, I’d recommend it over DirecTV in a heartbeat.