AT&T’s U-verse: [more than] a review.

Note:  This post may seem to digress from the normal topics heralded in this blog, but I promise there’s a connection to technology and higher ed.  Read on to find out more!

We were having dinner with friends last summer, and they were telling us about the amazing new cable service they had installed.  It’s called U-verse, they said, and instead of traditional cable service, AT&T actually delivers the TV over the internet. Loving technology, the idea of TV over the internet seemed pretty amazing to me.  I actually got up from the table (right in the middle of dinner), got my computer, and tried to find out if we were eligible to install the service.  Alas, we were not.

So for the last eight months or so, I’ve been checking the eligibility website pretty consistently, just hoping that we would become eligible.  We had no luck until about two weeks ago when I just randomly checked the site, and found out we were ready to go with the service!  We headed over to our local AT&T store the very next day and got signed up for the install.  Last Tuesday we got U-verse installed, and it’s AMAZING.  I thought I would spend just a few moments sharing my thoughts on why exactly it is so successful.

1.  Picture quality and audio are both excellent. It’s definitely as good or better than the digital TV we had before.  You’d probably think that having the signal delivered over the internet would make for unreliable service, but it really isn’t the case.  The quality has been very consistent, with few (if any) drops in audio or video artifacts.

2.  Ahh… DVR. I used to have a Tivo and I loved it.  I just couldn’t see paying for that service in addition to the regular cable charges.  The trouble is when you don’t have the opportunity to time-shift, you end up watching shows that you’d probably never watch.  Recording allows us to watch shows that we’re interested in.  The result: we probably watch less TV on the whole, and that’s probably not a bad thing.  The best part about U-verse DVR?  You can watch shows from your DVR on any box in any room in the house (it is networked, after all).

3.  Software updates! AT&T has the opportunity to remotely offer software updates to the set top boxes.  Two days after we got the service installed AT&T released a new weather channel in several markets; they’ll be adding it in Holland and other places by the end of February.  Remote software updates will also allow them to continue to add features to the “Total Home DVR” system that is currently in place.

4.  It’s just plain elegant. And this is where we get to the connection to technology and higher education (and you thought it wasn’t coming!).  Whether or not your constituents are aware of it, they have come to expect a certain user experience as they interact with your product.  U-verse’s interface is simple, thoughtful, and clean, but it’s also incredibly elegant at the same time.  This is pretty important when you consider that their main product here is visual content.  Even the hardware is nice to look at!

AT&T’s product will be successful because they’ve addressed the whole package: usability, feature set, elegance in user interface, and customer experience/service.  I just wish they would take the hyphen out of their name.