AT&T to launch Homezone TV service
Just because
AT&T's Lightspeed and the late SBC and BellSouth's nascent FTTH rollout (which they now
own, in a manner
of speaking) aren't yet ready to provide prime time IPTV to the
masses doesn't mean they will be stopped from taking on cable companies every which way they can; enter their new
Homezone service. Since the DSL they currently serve up wouldn't be quite broad enough to give AT&T what they need
for a true live-IPTV experience, they're bundling it with live TV from DISH, movie downloads from MovieLink, older programming from Akimbo, and DVR functionality in a single 2Wire-built box. It may
seem a little piecemeal, but we're a little surprised this kind of home entertainment hodgepodge angle hasn't
already been explored -- our only real fear here is whether AT&T and 2Wire will nail it when bringing so many kinds
of user experiences into a single livingroom box.
Filed under: Home Entertainment
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
Miacol @ Apr 19th 2006 10:39AM
I'm want High Speed Data access for home, HDTV for home (and I mean good stuff not 500 sports channels, I wanna see what I wanna see), and want my Cingular Bill all in one together. So then I can turn around and say I am an ATT customer.
JSolo @ Apr 19th 2006 12:02PM
Excellent! Now the NSA gets to figure out what I'm watching on TV if I'm an AT&T customer. I wonder if the NSA is going to be creating their own internal tv ratings systems akin to Nielsen? Whatever you do - do not watch any porn via AT&T, otherwise the guys doing the monitoring might get a bit distracted and then you know, something might blow up on their watch and then they'd be out of a job and we just can't have any ex NSA snoops jobless because of your porn habits, right?
Dave @ Apr 19th 2006 12:03PM
Good to hear that they didn't stop innovating with their revolutionary government-endorsed domestic spying programs. Thanks, AT&T--but I do believe I will pass.
The1 @ Apr 19th 2006 4:41PM
Since I work for att; let me say you will be waiting a long time for LIGHTSPEED.
IPTVwizard @ Apr 19th 2006 5:20PM
Well, let's see>>>AT&T put all their eggs in the Microsoft basket. Microsoft cannot deliver a working system (each time they add a feature they break another dozen things). No one really knows if Microsoft can do it, other than the fact they can throw more money than G*D at it.
They have sold all the telcos a line of bull about the wonders of their,as yet, unreleased "grand experiement".
The cable companies are laughing about this watching the telcos and Microsoft fumble around while they just keep steadily building more and better services on a now pretty darn good netowkr infrastructure. Also, the calb ecompanies learned to work together...thanks to Cablelabs!
Watch and see what happens....telcos have a really long way to go!
Thomas @ Apr 19th 2006 6:00PM
There is no way Telco will be able to pull anything off to really hurt the cable guys until they get fiber running to the home.. But til they get enuf funding to support the cost of wirin the country w/ fiber, the cable guys will be far past them..
And Dish, ha..
johnqpublic @ Jan 29th 2007 6:32PM
look up bltv a small hick company that is 4 years into the future
johnqpublic @ Feb 18th 2007 12:55PM
BLTV look this little hick phone company up it is four years ahead of the best and they ARE the cutting edge, proving that cable over phone is closer than you Think.
johnqpublic @ Jan 29th 2007 6:37PM
Turns out that this new service rocks, well, so far, I hope At&t doesn't suck like their Previous Owners Did.
Gary Aknos @ Feb 1st 2007 1:33PM
Just an FYI... I just called AT&T to get set up on the service since they are offering the box for free ($200 value) only to find out that you CAN NOT get HD programming through the HomeZone box. In essence, to use HomeZone through my primary TV (which is HD) I would only get the satellite programming in standard broadcast, not in HD. I suspected that the customer service rep was an idiot (since you can clearly see an HDMI output on the box) so she escalated the call to a Dish rep who confirmed that you cannot get HD programming through the HomeZone box. I'm guessing the HDMI output is there for future enhancements, but in my opinion, the system is a half-baked until they can integrate HD and Homezone in the same unit.