AT&T TV Launches Nationwide Feb. 2020

I have yet to hear from anyone on the boards that actually has this device and service.
I am extremely interested but am hesitant to take the leap until I hear some details from actual subscribers.
I've watched all of the Ytube videos.

 

Interesting. I wonder how this does PIP. That's something I'd want if it works well.

I'm still wondering a couple of things:

1) If all you need is the one box, then my assumption is that the rest of the TVs in the house would use an app? (Firestick ATV Roku?) and do these streams that are going through your home network count against your "streams". If it doesn't, then that makes me interested.

2) Is there a list of channels? How do they handle RSNs and are the same RSNs available on DirecTV available here?

And I still wonder about performance. Especially once this is rolled out to lots of people, will performance degrade? How will they handle current DirecTV customers, as new customers (assuming there would be a new customer deal). One of the reasons I've balked on moving to cable is because they won't treat me as a "new" customer since I'm getting their minimum cable package (as a backup) and they are my ISP. If I could get a new customer deal, I might jump.

 

I'm sure #1 would count as multiple streams.

Also as of 1/1/2020 the app is not available on Roku. If you had installed it before 1/1/20 it will still work until you delete it. They are working on a new agreement with Roku but have not got one yet.

 

Well, here are a couple of user review videos for AT&T TV (not AT&T TV Now). They're long and kinda boring and aren't particularly thorough. But they are quite positive. The first of the two videos is by a guy who came from Uverse TV and he definitely prefers AT&T TV.





Beyond those two guys, I think I've only read one comment (over at DSL Reports) from an actual AT&T TV user. He also came to it from Uverse TV and had good things to say about AT&T TV.

 

So far, AT&T TV is offering pretty much the same channel packages as DTV: Entertainment, Choice, Xtra, Ultimate, and Optimo Mas. There may be a few niche channels that aren't included in the AT&T TV version of those packages, though. The main differences would be your locals and possibly your RSNs. There are still some cities where AT&T TV lacks one of the big 4 network affiliates (and lots where it still lacks the local CW and/or My Network TV affiliate). They don't have any PBS stations yet, although now that PBS has gotten on board with live streaming (they just launched on YouTube TV), I expect that to be remedied on AT&T TV before too long.

You can see the channel lists and check your locals and RSNs here:
https://cdn.directv.com/content/dam...channels/att-tv/compare-packages-account.html

AT&T TV is also missing some of the add-on sports channels, I think. Perhaps we'll see several of those missing channels suddenly get filled in shortly before the nationwide launch next month. (For instance, last I checked, AT&T definitely had an agreement in place to carry certain locals via streaming -- e.g. all Nexstar-owned ABC affiliates -- but they had yet to actually get them online. So they could have a number of them queued up to be added all at once.)

Performance is the key question about AT&T TV in my mind. Have they squashed their bugs? Are they ready to scale this thing? If they can make it work as well as YouTube TV (which should absolutely be do-able for a company with the resources of AT&T), it should be fine.

Who knows what kind of pricing or promos they'll be running next month. We'll soon see...

 

Thanks for the chart. So I see three major misses for me in the NY Metro. No PBS (which you mentioned), no CW (which also means some local baseball would be missing for me, and other shows I watch on the CW) and no NFL Network. And this is the type of thing I mean about going streaming. There's always a service that carries MOST of what I need, but each one is missing a channel or two that is critical to my TV viewing. This service is currently missing THREE. So, while I was cautiously optimistic that this might work for me, it doesn't look like it will. It DOES have all of the RSNs though, which is a good thing.

 

I was a beta tester for about 6 months. I was with DirecTv for around 20 years and gave the service a try and then got selected to receive on of the att boxes. Coming from DirecTv it was very similar. The new streaming box worked pretty close to any directv receiver i had in the past. You can choose guide, channel numbers, dvr recordings (list), previous channel ect. Picture quality was good, dolby 5.1 was good. The one thing i couldn't stand and couldn't get over was the dvr functionality. 20 hours wasn't enough and skipping through commercials was a chore. I tried to enjoy it and wanted to keep it because in my particular location i was able to receive 3 sets of locals. Cincinnati, Lexington, and Charleston WV. This was always a problem with the other streaming services i had used up to that point. With Hulu live and psvue i would get one location when i signed in one day and a different one the same or next day, drove me crazy. With ATT streaming i received all 3 from the get go and it stayed that way. Channel package i had, i think it was similar to choice so i really liked that and was willing to pay the $90 i was paying for service without all the HD access, extra boxes, multi room, regional sports fees, etc. so if they had had a decent dvr I would have stayed with them. Once i tried YoutubeTv and seen my locals were stable I just canceled ATT Tv on the 4th. YoutubeTV is a far superior service imo, the main thing i am missing from it in my household is dolby digital on live programming. My amazon fire devices do a decent job of mixing surround sound, shield tv and roku is only in stereo.
No way would i sign a commitment to the service as it stands today.
Funny side note is i am actually using the ospery (sp?) to view youtubetv on a set today.
Not sure if that helps you or not but thought i'd chime in.
KRM

 

I'm sure people coming from Uverse TV will all love AT&T TV, with new equipment and requiring less bandwidth (which will matter to the ones on DSL) what's not to like?

The question is how it will fend against the other streaming MVPDs. Until they drop that ridiculous two year commitment, probably not well.

I wonder if they are doing that because they plan to align the product offering closely with satellite when it launches nationally - i.e. having the same package prices, offers and terms, differing only in channels (due to contracts for locals and stuff like NFLST) and additional fees like the ARF and per TV charges. Sort of a "you choose how you want it delivered" scenario. That's the only reason I can think of for why they would want to limit its market with that two year commitment.

 

Well, as I said, PBS just recently (after working on it for more than a year) got to the point where they and their local member stations are able to do live streaming. They're now on YouTube TV and I can't see any reason why AT&T TV won't get it too given the relationships that AT&T already has with PBS stations across the nation. I'd expect NYC to be one of the first places where that happens. (Also, it was just announced that PBS plans to carry a free live stream of the main PBS channel in their own PBS app.)

Given the size of NYC, and the fact that your CW affiliate there is owned by a sizable group (E.W. Scripps) whom I'm sure AT&T TV is already working with, I'd also expect that station to eventually be added too. Just a matter of when. They already have some CW affiliates on board, such as the one in Chicago.

As for NFL Network and NFL Red Zone, they both got yanked from both Uverse TV and DirecTV Now earlier this year. AT&T said they couldn't reach an agreeable cost. I assume that a separate contract still covers DirecTV satellite for NFL content, which is why it still has NFL Network. Who knows how all that will shake out but it may be tied to what happens with the future of NFL Sunday Ticket. At some point (maybe still another year off), I expect we'll either see NFL Network on all of AT&T's cable TV services or none of them, as the company seems to be moving toward unified carriage contracts across all their services.

NFL Network pulled from AT&T U-verse and DirecTV Now

 

Not necessarily! If AT&T TV isn't reliable, if the box is laggy and prone to crash, if live channels often fail to load, or recordings randomly disappear from the cloud DVR, then I don't think Uverse TV customers would be happy with it. Fortunately, I'm not hearing anything like that so far, but then three users is a pretty tiny test sample.

On paper, AT&T TV looks very good (other than the 2 year contract and 90 day time limit on recordings) but, as I say, the test will be in how well it actually performs. I'm hesitant given the buggy, slow-to-improve track record of DirecTV Now/AT&T TV Now, which runs on the same tech platform.

I really don't think AT&T TV will be primarily competing against YouTube TV and Hulu with Live TV. To some degree, yes, but I see it more as a direct competitor against Comcast, Charter, Verizon FiOS, DISH, and AT&T's existing Uverse TV and DirecTV services. It's a next-gen cable TV service for them to offer their broadband customers (which helps them sell that product too) and it's something that most DTV customers could potentially switch over to since AT&T TV will be a nationwide OTT offering running over any broadband connection.

Dunno. At least in the pilot test markets, their strategy seems to be "let's just take the existing marketing approach for DirecTV and apply it to this new platform". So AT&T TV has the same 2-yr contract, same channel packages, very similar (but not exactly the same) prices, same kind of first year discounts and Visa gift card promos. Is that because that's the actual long-term plan for AT&T TV (even though that marketing strategy isn't working well for DTV, to put it lightly)? Or is it just because they weren't ready or willing to unveil their actual plans for AT&T TV until the big nationwide launch?

Hopefully they're looking to make a big splash by announcing a service with terms that are more favorable for consumers than what we might expect based on what we've seen in the pilot markets so far. Hopefully those terms will actually align with all the comments that the CEO has made over the past couple of years, meaning that we'll see lower pricing for AT&T TV, somewhat slimmer channel packages, and the abandonment of the 2-yr contract with bait-and-switch pricing (much lower in year one, then a big hike in year two). If that doesn't come to pass, and I were an equity analyst on the next quarterly earnings call, I'd certainly ask Stephenson why not and what changed in their game plan.

 

And when those stations are added, I'll consider switching. Just like if the stations missing from YouTubeTV get added, I might switch to that. My only choices right now that has everything I want in one place is either Optimum, my cable provider or DirecTV satellite. Even Dish doesn't work for me.

 

Fair enough. Not trying to sell anybody on anything, just offering whatever relevant info I have plus my $0.02. (And I suspect that DISH no longer works for lots of folks after they've dropped both HBO and the Fox RSNs. They increasingly seem to be playing at the budget end of the market among MVPDs.)

 

To add to this, the CW app is literally streaming everything for free, no password/subscription required.

 

Commercials?

 

Which is great, but then I run into the conundrum of having multiple services to watch "standard TV". But by CW, it's not only their national stuff, but their local (WPIX) 10 o'clock news, the Yankees and Mets games that air on there, and even the random Seinfeld and Friends reruns that's convenient to flip to in bed before I fall asleep. So it's not the CW per se that I'm looking for, but the actual local station.

On a different note, Verizon just dropped their contract commitments and internet bundling, so maybe AT&T will rethink what they do with AT&T TV now.

 

That's all understandable, for the local content and sports.

 

There are the dreaded *looks left, looks right, and quietly whispers*...commercials.

 

...if you can’t FF thru them then it’s a non-starter for me...

 

Hopefully, although Verizon FiOS and AT&T Fiber don't really have any overlap in their footprints, so they're not direct competitors in the broadband and traditional cable TV arenas.

It's interesting that Verizon has embraced YouTube TV and sells that right alongside their own FiOS TV as an option for their broadband customers. Couple years back they beta tested their own next-gen IPTV service but then decided not to move forward with it. So those new wireless 5G Home broadband customers that Verizon is signing up only have the option of YouTube TV if they want to bundle TV with their Verizon broadband. (Of course, they also have the option of subscribing directly to anything else that's OTT, like Hulu Live, AT&T TV, etc.)

 

Are they going to have AT&T SportsNet on this service because I don’t see it in the lineup.