Sell me video

If you’d like me to pay your company for video, here’s three ways you can do it.

1. Put it on iTunes.
2. Create an iOS app for it, and—this is crucial—support AirPlay and wired video out. Do not make me log in with my AT&T credentials unless you are AT&T. I shouldn’t need a cable, satellite, or U-verse subscription to view your content unless you actually are that company. Ensure that I can view your content through this app anywhere in the world where I have a wi-fi connection.
3. Partner with Apple to provide your content directly to my Apple TV. The relevant caveats from #2 apply here too.

Wait! Before you start telling my why these things aren’t possible, understand this: I don’t care. If you want my business, figure out how to make it happen. If you can’t, get as close as you can, and I’ll consider it.

AT&T

While I’m sure MMS will be nice, to me, it seems kind of redundant on my iPhone. I don’t have a laptop, so I have no need for tethering.

While I have had a couple of problems with U-verse, calling support got me to helpful people, and things were cleared up in fairly short order.

A week after getting U-verse, the set-top boxes were automatically updated with software that allowed watching DVR recordings from the other boxes. Recently, there’s been another update, as my non-DVR box can now erase and do other DVR operations that previously could only be done at the DVR box. The web voice-mail interface has had a facelift recently, and the web DVR interface has been upgraded as well.

Perhaps Apple’s current practice of providing continual improvements has rubbed off a little.

In short, I’m actually rather happy with AT&T.

Latest U-verse update

I’d had problem with U-verse VOIP when plugged into the POTS wiring in my house. A phone plugged directly into the U-verse gateway seemed to work fine. I figured that was just my problem.

I’d been having a lot of glitchiness with U-verse TV. It was intermittent. Then it developed this problem where on of the boxes would just stop getting video until you rebooted the box. Honestly, I suspected tech support wasn’t going to be very helpful.

Well, then I bought an on-demand movie. It wasn’t glitchy the way live (or DVR’d) TV was. This video just paused for about three seconds after playing for a second. None of the compression-artifact-like stuff. And the audio would only work if the video managed to keep from pausing for a few seconds. So, I called tech support.

I shouldn’t have waited. Once tier-one support had confirmed that I’d tried all the normal troubleshooting already, they passed me up to tier-two. Tier-two could actually look at stats from the set-top boxes and the gateway and see that there were lots of errors and where they were. They scheduled someone to come out the next day.

When the guy got here, he quickly assessed that the problems were the existing wiring in my house. Both the POTS wiring and the TV co-ax cabling had issues that were causing my problems with U-verse. He re-wired everything for me, and all seems good now.

So, two black eyes for AT&T here.

The guy who did the initial installation should have taken the time to take a closer look at the wiring in the house and fix it up. A quick installation is not a good thing if it isn’t a good installation.

Secondly, they scheduled the repair for sometime between 8am to noon. (I still don’t understand why the rest of us can schedule appointments at specific times but telephone and cable companies can’t.) The guy didn’t get here until at least 1pm. They didn’t bother to call and say he would be late.

But I was very impressed by both the telephone support people and the technician that came out. When I have actually called AT&T, they’ve gotten issues fixed. I shouldn’t have put off calling them.

An open letter to AT&T

1. Don’t tell me I requested something when I didn’t.

When I signed up for U-verse, this apparently required the unbundling of my mobile bill from my other AT&T bills. They didn’t tell me this. Instead, they sent me a card telling me that I’d requested it.

Note that it isn’t that the mobile bill cannot be bundled with the U-verse services. They’ve now re-bundled it for me.

1a. You should’ve told me up-front. 1b. You should have not told me I requested it when I didn’t. 1c. OK, this may sound crazy, but maybe you should just not require the unbundling in the first place.

2. If the billing address and/or account number changes...I don’t know...maybe...tell me!

Oh, and 3. Date your correspondence.