Submitted by UverseUsers members, uverse and uverse-nut.

The people behind the scenes at AT&T have been working hard to ink deals with all of the major networks to carry their programming. Yesterday they announced a deal with Discovery Network, and today they are churning out even more news. AT&T has just announced an agreement with NFL Network to provide its 24-hour year-round network to AT&T U-verse subscribers in both SD and HD feeds as well as video on demand. The deal includes nearly 2,000 hours of original programming, 168 game telecasts, regular-season primetime games, and access to all annual NFL events such as the preseason, regular-season, postseason, Super Bowl, Pro Bowl, NFL Scouting Combine, mini-camps, the NFL Draft, training camp, and free agency news.

Keep 'em coming AT&T. We like what we see so far!

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Read the complete saga of my installation nightmare on the Installation Timeline page.

Let me start by saying that I think AT&T has a good thing going with U-verse. The set top box software looks great, utilizing IPTV will allow them to deliver functionality that cable companies can't match, and they chose to price the service very competitively. However, just offering a better product isn't always enough to win...If you don't believe me, just ask Steve Jobs.

Over the past several years I have had the opportunity to be a customer of both Dish Network and Time Warner. I was very happy with Dish Network and their DVR was pretty decent, but when I upgraded to an HD television, I wasn't very satisfied with the limited HD programming they were offering at the time. I ended up switching to to Time Warner because they offered all of the network stations in HD and I could get an HD DVR for only $5 per month.

I never was very happy as a Time Warner customer, but probably not for the reasons that you would think. My signal was always a little finicky, but not as bad as it was with satellite. On top of that, I was always having problems with my cable box. The image was pixelated pretty often, and the recording was never reliable. I can't even count the number of times that the DVR said it was recording, only to find out later when I tried to watch the show that it hadn't been. And it didn't help that I was paying more than I had been for Dish Network. But none of that was enough to make me give up on Time Warner completely.

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Submitted by UverseUsers member, uverse.

AT&T has announced a comprehensive agreement with Discovery Communications to include all of its US linear TV networks, high-definition, and on demand services as part of the U-verse channel lineup.

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While AT&T has yet to release any figures detailing their success rate signing up subscribers for their new U-verse service, UverseUsers is the first to bring you anecdotal evidence of how the roll-out is going...and it appears to be going VERY well. My neighborhood on the northwest side of San Antonio was swarmed with AT&T trucks today doing home installs as fast as humanly possible. The picture shown above is just one of the many I took of trucks lining the streets. It was as if they were installing U-verse in people's homes a block at a time and then marching on to the next block to do it again. If my neighborhood is a sign of things to come, the cable companies had better fight tooth and nail to keep AT&T out of their cities, or they could face some very tough competition.

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AT&T has been in a fight for their lives in Connecticut, and it looks like things may have taken a turn for the better. On June 7 the state's Department of Public Utility Control (DPUC) voted 3-2 to allow AT&T to offer IPTV over phone lines, and it didn't take the cable companies long to put up a fight. On June 13, the state attorney general, the consumer counsel, three cable companies, and the New England Cable and Telecommunications Associations filed a joint motion to stay the decision. On Friday, the DPUC issued a draft decision that it "does not find sufficient grounds" to issue a stay. The draft will now be taken to the full DPUC commission for approval. Of course, the cable companies are urging the full commission to reject the draft.

UverseUsers will keep you posted on any developing news related to this decision, but at the moment, things are looking great for AT&T in Connecticut.

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AT&T has an interesting page on their U-verse site entitled the AT&T U-verse Time Machine. The time machine is a timeline that documents the major leaps forward in the history of communication and entertainment beginning with the first transatlantic telegraph sent in 1858 and ending with the release of the U-verse service. Some other interesting events from the timeline are:

• 1945 - The advent of electronic computing. The first computer filled a room and weighed over 30 tons.
• 1970 - Fiber-optic cable was invented by engineers at Corning Glass.
• 1971 - The first email was sent between two computer sitting side by side at BBN Technologies.
• 1991 - The World Wide Web Project began. By 1992, the number of web hosts exceeded 1,000,000.

To see the full timeline, visit the U-verse Time Machine.

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Alan over at SATechBlog.com has posted a nice video review of the U-verse channel guide he received recently. Alan was a beta-tester of U-verse and has blogged quite extensively about his experience. If you haven't seen his site before, it is worth a read.

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We got a chance to snap some close up pictures of the box AT&T will be using for their initial rollout of Uverse. The model we photographed is labeled the Tatung Set Top Box 5000. While it isn't much to look at, the speed seemed great. Channels changed instantly and there was no lag when browsing the guide or any other menus. The box contains a fairly average 80GB hard drive offering up 80 hours of recordings. Hopefully future versions of the receiver will offer the ability to record in MP4 or some other compressed format, but that does not appear to be a feature of this box. The inputs and outputs were also fairly standard composite or S-video plus a digital audio out for the audio-philes. Interestingly enough, there was a USB 2.0 port. Unfortunately, we were not able to test whether it would be possible to pull video from the hard drive over this port, but I would imagine that AT&T has this feature disabled if it exists at all. Although AT&T's website says the receiver offers 14 days of programming in the guide, the model we saw only showed the upcoming 10 days. One of the nice features of the service is the parental controls. Although we weren't able to photograph the setup screen, it offers very fine-tuning even down to the ability to disable specific channels for a set amount of time.

Much more interesting than the Tatung box was the things our source had to say about the upcoming Motorola box, expected to be released sometime in September or October. More after the jump.

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