So, Comcast’s latest commercials are aimed directly at U-Verse customers… Perhaps they are only running them on U-Verse… but it seemed like a rip off of Verizon’s Droid Does campaign and was enough to get me interested to click on through to their website listed in the ad.

I’d love to get some of the data they used to make these claims because they really seem outrageous and some cursory searching around on Comcast’s site to “learn more about xfinity” didn’t even mention any of these points.

More HD

Xfinity has over 3,000 HD choices. U-verse has only 254

First off.. 254 HD channels on U-Verse seems very high. Checked my channel lineup (easily accessible, not so much for comcast’s), went to the largest package and Chrome tells me that there are 289 “HD”‘s on the page. And there’s generally an HD in the channel abbreviation and in the description so each channel gets counted twice. So rough guess is 145 HD channels are available. I have a hard time believing that comcast even can offer 3000 channels.. let alone all of them in High Definition. Something definately isn’t right there.

Better HD^*

Xfinity has better HD picture quality than U-verse.

That sounds very subjective… but somehow it sounds fishy. Notice that “*” in the heading. Here’s the fine print from that page:

^*HD picture quality rating based on September though December 2008 study of the top HD channels by Frank N. Magid Associates.

A quick google search turns up magid.com with a suspicious sounding mission statement:

Our Mission

Frank N. Magid Associates, Inc. helps our clients become more profitable by solving their business problems and helping them take advantage of opportunities.

And their page on what they can offer the Cable and Satellite Distribution Industry is also fluffy and reeks of astroturf. I’d love to review how they reviewed and analysed HD picture quality.

Much faster Internet^**

Xfinity’s fastest Internet speeds are more than twice as fast as those of U-verse (50 Mbps vs. 24 Mbps).
And if you’re watching two HD shows at the same time and try to go online, U-verse’s fastest Internet speeds will not be reached.

Again with the asterisks… this refers to “Sand Cherry Associates” equally fluffy. Can’t argue with the 50Mbps to 24Mbps caps, but I wonder how often you actually get the full 50Mbps since you’re sharing your bandwidth with your neighbors. Also, the asterisks admit that the reduction in speed only applies to U-Verse speeds above 18Mbps, and that’s only when you need the bandwidth for HDTV or Phone. Personally, I’d rather see my internet slow down a bit then see my TV picture break up or phone calls interrupted.

More On Demand entertainment

Xfinity has 13,000 more On Demand choices than U-verse.

This one may not surprise me that much. AT&T’s On Demand offering always seems limited.. but I am not a big consumer of On Demand content… When I had Comcast, they had a better selection, but 13,000 more seems very outlandish to me.

The ability to stream multiple HD channels

With U-verse, only two HD channels can be streamed to one household at the same time.

Last I checked, two HD streams is multiple… as in.. more then one. But yeah, one DVR can record two HD shows at once, and two additional non-HD shows. Its never been an issue for me since I don’t record THAT much TV… and if I ever had to make a choice, chances are one of the shows is something like Seinfeld that I wouldn’t mind recording in Standard Definition because it wasn’t even recorded in HD!

The ability to pause any TV with a DVR box

With U-verse, only one TV showing live content can be paused at any time.

And finally… I only have one DVR box, but I find this limitation hard to believe. If I had 2 DVR boxes why can’t both pause live TV? I’ve never heard anyone complain of this.. is this really a problem for anyone?

In the 3-4 years I’ve had Comcast’s premiere offering.. I’ve never been impressed. Their systems are slow.. menus are cumbersome… and the service was unreliable. I’ve been a U-Verse customer for well over a year now and I’ve been happy with it!