Last month , Gizmodo attended a press briefing for a young , soon - to - release streaming servicing from AT&T. No , not its forthcoming HBO Max service , or AT&T TV Now service ( formerly DirecTV Now ) . This one would be a separate alive television receiver streaming Robert William Service call AT&T telly — a service primarily power by Google . It looked peachy during the demonstration in February , but while trialing the overhaul , its hardware , and its link up app , I ’ve struggled to immobilize down who this is for . Not only is AT&T TV ’s stigmatise improbably confusing , but the Robert William Service itself is a little clunky , sometimes frustrating , and very , very expensive .
First , countenance ’s cover what exactly this is : AT&T television is dissimilar from the company’sAT&T TV Now . It ’s the company ’s first computer hardware - based cyclosis mathematical product and run on Android TV . You pay for a TV subscription and get an Android box with build - in support include . You do n’t need to pledge to AT&T internet to use the TV boxful ( but AT&T would really wish you to ) . With Google Assistant work up into the ware ’s remote control , the mind is that users can seamlessly trade between alive television , swarm over the cyberspace , and their various other apps like Netflix , Starz , YouTube , etc .
It ’s an Android TV corner so AT&T telly ticket tout more than 5,000 apps available through the Google Play store , including Spotify and Pandora . Smart home app integrating allow you to control your various IoT machine with Assistant , including slur the lights or changing the temperature on your thermoregulator .
Photo: Catie Keck (Gizmodo)
The AT&T TV is not a traditional waiter render lot - top boxwood though . There ’s no input for a coaxial cable television ( it has ones for USB , HDMI , Ethernet , and digital sound recording ) . Instead , it ’s all cloud - free-base . You utilize the work up - in AT&T tv set divine service which offers support for up to 500 hours of cloud DVR storehouse with straight-out simultaneous recording as well as three simultaneous flow ( so you could swarm from an additional telecasting box , telephone set , data processor , or tablet ) .
The setup is pretty straight — one of the service ’s perquisite — with visual instruction for the ironware and on - screen door prompts for pairing the removed and other feature of speech . ( You ’ll need to stand pretty near to the box to get it to pair , it took me several moment to get mine to mate . ) And AT&T TV ’s company app for Mobile River , tablets , and web was pretty intuitive and easy to use . Both the TV and app port make the discovery of hot , as well as on demand , show and picture show ( up to 55,000 titles ) somewhat unlined , with segment for things like sport shows , Modern - this - month content , kids contentedness , reality TV , and respective sections for tv and movies by literary genre . For apps like Netflix , 4 K cyclosis is supported as well .
Chromecast comes built into the box as well , so users are capable to cast video or audio from their phone . That means that app musical accompaniment for service like Spotify and Pandora is majuscule intelligence for the great unwashed who have their television set hooked up to a speaker organisation but do n’t expect too much help from the remote control on this front . The Google Assistant - powered remote control did n’t seem to be able to help me do things in these apps like hunt for artists or music genre .
Image: Gizmodo
Nothing really matches the extra kind of craze you palpate when conduct with a streaming product that requires you to infix each individual letter with a distant control and on - screen keyboard to find the content you want , particularly if you ’re hop around quite a bit with what you ’re hear to . And AT&T TV struggle to do things that come easy and stock with , say , Apple TV , including search with command on apps like Spotify and Netflix . The power to cast , though , comes through for these kind of apps on AT&T TV . It just means you ’ll call for to have your phone W. C. Handy as a kind of second remote control if you require to avoid the infuriating appendage of manual entering .
The Google Assistant remote control did do what it was supposed to most of the time , if the streaming overhaul did n’t clangour . And crash it did — on multiple occasion while I was doing things as basic as switching the channel or asking the Assistant to serve me find a epithelial duct . To be unmortgaged , all services are susceptible to the occasional clangoring . But this is AT&T ’s third service , if you countAT&T WatchTVandDirecTV Now . Taken together with a frequent interim prison term in the Assistant ’s responses to my inquiries , it made for a sometimes frustrating user experience . On a couple of occasion , the Assistant got overwhelmed and seemed to give up altogether , ignoring whatever it was I asked of it . ( And folks , these were not tough postulation — a digital supporter make into a television remote should n’t be confused by request to draw up capacity or flip between live television set and apps . )
But the big unsuccessful person of AT&T tv set is its contractual pricing . One of the large reasons users typically opt to swop to streaming from traditional transmission line are lengthy contract and secret fees . And with this fresh service , users may find some of those traditional cable system vexation range up in the fine mark . AT&T TV has three primary price tier : Entertainment for $ 50 , Choice for $ 55 , and Xtra for $ 65 per calendar month . But those prices are contingent upon a two - year accord and only apply to the first yr of service , after which those prices can double to up to $ 93 for Entertainment , $ 110 for Choice , and $ 142 for Xtra . That ’s before the extra monthly add - on fee of $ 8 for regional sports with the Choice and Xtra plans .
AT&T TV’s remote with a button for the Google Assistant.Photo: Gizmodo
And if you do adjudicate to take the jump , you better be willing to commit or prepared to compensate . In its offer point detect , AT&T tell it applies an early termination fee of $ 15 per calendar month for each remaining calendar month on the accord . That ’s the equivalent of compensate for a Netflix subscription every month just to tell AT&T to fuck off . And that ’s especially steep deal there are substantially cheaper alternatives to live programming — Sling and YouTube TV like a shot come to mind — that do n’t come with so many string attached .
There is such a thing as too many serving , and with AT&T TV , we have an object lesson of one that ’s nice in theory but in the end does n’t make a lot of horse sense when regard the farsighted - term toll to users . Why anyone would opt for an expensive religious service that locks them into long - term agreements when they could simply buy astreaming boxthat supports apps with alive boob tube subscriptions is n’t clear . If this is the hereafter of idiot box cyclosis we ’re make out .
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