AT&T IPTV now coming to your PC

AT&T announced Thursday that its U-verse Internet Protocol television service will now allow subscribers to watch live programming on their PCs.

Until now, U-verse had been an IPTV competitor to traditional cable and satellite companies, much in the way Verizon's Fios fiber-optic network competes with cable and satellite. But with the new PC-based offering, an AT&T-branded MobiTV package called U-verse OnTheGo, the company is bringing television programming--some of it live--to subscribers' computers. Now, the company says, subscribers who opt into the OnTheGo deal can watch U-verse TV wherever a broadband Internet connection is available.

Some of the channels with live content that AT&T is touting as part of OnTheGo are The Weather Channel and Bloomberg Television.

AT&T is soliciting new customers with a 14-day free trial of OnTheGo, which currently features a lineup of slightly fewer than 30 channels and requires a prior subscription to the U-verse IPTV service. After that, it costs an extra $10 per month in addition to the cost of a U-verse package. Access to the new OnTheGo service is limited to computers running the Windows XP operating system with Microsoft's Internet Explorer or Mozilla's Firefox browser.

Only a handful of U.S. urban markets currently have access to AT&T's U-verse, and consequently subscriptions to the OnTheGo add-on are equally limited by geography. AT&T, however, stresses that this will change as its IPTV endeavors expand. The company promises more channels and content for OnTheGo soon, as well as increased availability throughout the country.

In addition, AT&T said, there are plans to bring the OnTheGo programming to mobile phones via AT&T's wireless service, the former Cingular Wireless.

[Solaris_User]

U-verse?

Are they kidding? What a stupid name.

[Stating]

No Better Than "MLife"

A few years ago when AT&T ran a cellular business, they had a concept called "MLife" (mobile life). It's featured lots of cool 20 somethings constantly connected to their friends through thir AT&T phone. If you weren't a 20 something, or cool, you had no life I guess. When MLife folded, were the cool people still cool?

[Solaris_User]

U-verse?

Are they kidding? What a stupid name.

[Stating]

No Better Than "MLife"

A few years ago when AT&T ran a cellular business, they had a concept called "MLife" (mobile life). It's featured lots of cool 20 somethings constantly connected to their friends through thir AT&T phone. If you weren't a 20 something, or cool, you had no life I guess. When MLife folded, were the cool people still cool?

[Llib Setag]

ATT IPTV : AppleTV

Since the long partnership between ATT & Apple is existing, plus the Apple iPhone with ATT/Cingular & NOW ATT IPTV and AppleTV is there something cooking here?

With the release of Mac OSX 10.5 Leopard very soon, will AppleTV have "new features" that are hidden today that will allow IPTV access to AppleTV.

Somehow I do not think we are seeing the "Big Picture" with the AppleTV device yet...

Hmmm...

[-fjtorres-]

Don't count on it...

U-verse is based on 100% Microsoft technology and the streaming video is in WMV/VC1 format.
Plus AT&T has a deal to use XBOX 360s as premium IPTV clients; the low end version runs on WinCE.
So Leopard or pussycat, this tiger ain't changing its stripes. ;-)
Dream on...

[jacobdol]

another Windows ONLY lame product/service

tired of this.. Can't wait for Joost (http://www.joost.com/) to be
out. It's cross platform and from the same people who gave us
Skype.
ATT is just not capable of any cool cross platform products.

[Llib Setag]

ATT IPTV : AppleTV

Since the long partnership between ATT & Apple is existing, plus the Apple iPhone with ATT/Cingular & NOW ATT IPTV and AppleTV is there something cooking here?

With the release of Mac OSX 10.5 Leopard very soon, will AppleTV have "new features" that are hidden today that will allow IPTV access to AppleTV.

Somehow I do not think we are seeing the "Big Picture" with the AppleTV device yet...

Hmmm...

[-fjtorres-]

Don't count on it...

U-verse is based on 100% Microsoft technology and the streaming video is in WMV/VC1 format.
Plus AT&T has a deal to use XBOX 360s as premium IPTV clients; the low end version runs on WinCE.
So Leopard or pussycat, this tiger ain't changing its stripes. ;-)
Dream on...

[jacobdol]

another Windows ONLY lame product/service

tired of this.. Can't wait for Joost (http://www.joost.com/) to be
out. It's cross platform and from the same people who gave us
Skype.
ATT is just not capable of any cool cross platform products.

[chuck_whealton]

At least it's a start

I will say that even though it doesn't sound very enticing - the Weather Channel and Bloomberg live - at least it's a start.

However, it doesn't appear to be very widely available so this is more hype than anything.

I'll hope to hear more when they have the big networks available LIVE, and it's not tied to some other television offering that we can't even get in our geography. Allowing us to select and pay based on the channels we WANT, rather than forcing a bunch of garbage on us would also be nice.

But it's a start...

Charles R. Whealton
Charles Whealton @ pleasedontspam.com

[chuck_whealton]

At least it's a start

I will say that even though it doesn't sound very enticing - the Weather Channel and Bloomberg live - at least it's a start.

However, it doesn't appear to be very widely available so this is more hype than anything.

I'll hope to hear more when they have the big networks available LIVE, and it's not tied to some other television offering that we can't even get in our geography. Allowing us to select and pay based on the channels we WANT, rather than forcing a bunch of garbage on us would also be nice.

But it's a start...

Charles R. Whealton
Charles Whealton @ pleasedontspam.com

[tagno25]

insecure encryption

I use Opera 9.01 and when I go to any link on yhe AT&T U-verse webpage it receive "The server is using a short public encryption key, which is considered insecure."

[tagno25]

insecure encryption

I use Opera 9.01 and when I go to any link on yhe AT&T U-verse webpage it receive "The server is using a short public encryption key, which is considered insecure."

[TommieGee]

IPTV

Are you going to provide some form of captioning for those of us who do not hear well. This will not be very useful to us without captioning. There are around 31 million of us out here in the USA.

Thanks,
Tommie

[TommieGee]

IPTV

Are you going to provide some form of captioning for those of us who do not hear well. This will not be very useful to us without captioning. There are around 31 million of us out here in the USA.

Thanks,
Tommie

[BrianFH]

150 Free IPTV Channels

Excellent A/V; anyone who wants to try the new free TV beta from JOOST, email me for an invite, at this address:
brianfh01 @ yahoo dot ca

There are about 150 channels so far, with more coming. Heavy on the sports, music, documentary, etc. right now, but news and other categories are building fast. Minimums are XP, 500MHz, 500MB RAM, hi-speed lite, and 48MB video.

[BrianFH]

150 Free IPTV Channels

Excellent A/V; anyone who wants to try the new free TV beta from JOOST, email me for an invite, at this address:
brianfh01 @ yahoo dot ca

There are about 150 channels so far, with more coming. Heavy on the sports, music, documentary, etc. right now, but news and other categories are building fast. Minimums are XP, 500MHz, 500MB RAM, hi-speed lite, and 48MB video.