Uverse - not ready for prime time

I'm experiencing the joy of AT 'n T's U-Verse service. I'm underwhelmed.

With only ONE television turned on and no multiple DVR recordings happening - i.e. one standard def video stream - the picture froze about once every half hour.

The 2WIRE brand box that's the center of the system is the size of (remember telephone directories?) one of the volumes of the Manhattan yellow pages. I haven't figured out the network topology - I think it's all IP over co-ax.

The neat thing about it is it's a distributed digital video recording system. If you record the show on the main box - it's available for playback on the other boxes in the house. However it's impossible to delete a recorded show from one of the other boxes, it has to be done from the "main" set.

It seems to do firmware upgrades (or something) at odd times. 4:30 pm this afternoon, right in the middle of prime football watching - the main 2WIRE box went offline for five minutes. It's hard to tell if this is just a bad install or what - but it seems that many other u-verse users have similar issues.

The pluses - channel change is pretty well instantaneous, no delay like on digital cable or satellite. The picture quality is crystal clear (even when it's frozen for that 1 second or so every half hour).

I hate to say it but if they can fix the freeze-ups and I lived in an area where u-Verse was available - I might end my longstanding boycott of the deathstar.