How to get 6 HD streams with fiber upgrade in 2022

I believe you need:

The DVR (which you already have)

The 1000 Mbps fiber connection

--This may require a different gateway than what you already have.

You also may also need to be close enough to the VRAD.

TBH, since you'd be FTTH, I don't know if it still uses the VRAD. I believe the VRADs were originally brought in since it was FTTP. I'm FTTH and if I'm still on the VRAD, I don't know what the purpose of that is.

Now here's the other thing. Internet 1000 is heavily recommended. On rare occasion you'd be using all six live streams, there is a brief moment when those streams use double bandwidth during channel changes. If that happens, I believe you'd be using close to 100 Mbps.

I remember when I had 6Mbps and the screen was all sorts of jumpy, especially during fast motion like confetti or the background of live sports. Were my picture issues related to my slow speed or just a coincidence since I definitely had old wires? Hmm...

So you could *probably* get away with Internet 300, but 1000 is definitely recommended. Remember that 100 was upgraded for free to 300 and 300 was upgraded for free to 500.

But also, see what kind of promotions you can get. I'm down to $40/mo for Internet 1000 on a temporary basis (reg price for me is $60.)

@baseballisback That's good info.  Yea I'm not sure how vrads play into fiber I'm new to this system obviously.

I thought I remembered HD streams on uverse only using 6mbps per stream. (they also use all available bandwidth not just provisioned internet bandwidth when you are on copper/FTTN, so they rarely cut into a customers internet bandwidth in reality, but at&t often tried to blame uverse streams for internet issues when 99% of the time the 2 were completely unrelated.).  So 6 streams at 6mbps would be 36mbps, during an hourly show change those few minutes I suppose could burst to 72mbps, but that's still tiny. 

Yea my plan now is get 2000 or 5000 the 1st month to guarantee I get a bgw320 and xpon-fiber straight to gateway without switching to ethernet installation. and then switch to either 1000 or 500 or 300 after.  Because honestly I don't really think I'll need the extra speed, my only issues with my current 50/10mbps plan is occasionally the upload speed and more importantly the horrible quality of copper wires resulting in tons of internet disconnects and the extra lag.

It's not when the shows change, but when the viewer changes channels, IIRC.

100-72 = 28

By 2022 standards, 28 isn't much.

Keep in mind that if you're eligible for 1000, you may not be eligible for anything faster. I don't believe I am, but I'm also locked into so many various promotions, that faster speeds may not be showing up.

When I went from 100 fiber to 1000 fiber, they just did it automatically. I think I had an 5268 AC. I think I had to change to the BGW210 just because I had to switch to Ethernet to the DVR.

Yea I checked they are offering 5000 for my address.  Which makes sense since it's all brand new fiber for the whole neighborhood minus the 1 street they did 8+years ago that I've been jealous of. Lol although they may have upgraded that street as well to 5000 now.  Yea the coaxial connections always caused weird issues and errors to pop up with uverse tv system that's why they tried to eliminate them as much as possible with wireless boxes and ethernet.  A long long time ago all my stbs ran on coaxial and I had 5 tvs(only 4 could be used at a time). They worked fine for years until att would push an update to the system would just panic when too many streams were attempting to run.  That's when att eliminated my coax because they literally could not figure out why it would just go bananas and do weird stuff. 

(only 4 could be used at a time)

Not quite... anything watched off the DVR wouldn't have counted towards the limit, but it seems you know that since you definitely know what you're talking about. The DVR allows for three different shows onto three different TVs, PLUS watching something pre-recorded onto the TV the DVR is connected to.

@baseballisback yea the system shouldn't have had problems the way it was designed.  It's just at one point atts software system started having weird problems with coax, that literally no local att tech or manager could solve. They even tried running brand new coax lines and they would still have weird problems.  Home pna systems were never as robust as MoCa.  

Weird. I attribute my coax issues to the wire being old.

@baseballisback sooo.... I got fiber today.  2000mbps plan..bgw320 gateway...1 tb iph8010.  And yet... I did not get 6 streams.  I asked the tech but they aren't even training techs in uverse tv anymore so he had no idea.  

So unless anyone else has any ideas, I guess my only option is going to be to start down the rabbit hole if calling tech support to see if they can reprovision my system.

Although I am wondering if maybe it'll sort it's self out in a day or 2 on its own.  Since the smart home manager app seemed to be taking forever to update new info about new gateway and new plan maybe all the changes have to propagate through system before it'll switch from 0sd/4hd to 0sd/6hd.

TL:DR I think they solved my problem and you need to have MCT show 6HD streams to get it working.  

So the system did not update automatically.  I spoke with domestic tier 2 advanced tech support team and the agent put an order through manually to make the change to switch it from copper to fiber and 4 to 6 streams, said it would take about 30 minutes.  When he first put the order through all of my set top boxes and dvr restarted which seemed promising.  Well it's been 3 days and even after factory resteting bgw320 gateway as suggested it didn't work. But if finally managed to get through to advanced resolution team and the agent Angel seems to have been able to fix it.  Here's the weird part:

It seems at&t has 2 systems MST and MCT.  when I first called today 9/15 it showed me having 6 HD streams in MST and 4 streams in MCT.  So the team lead suggested putting an order in to switch it to 4 streams and and then when that finished putting in another order to switch it back to 6 streams.  When he put the order in to switch it to 4 streams, my system seems to have fixed itself.  

• It now shows the reverse 4 hd streams in MST and 6 HD streams in MCT. But it lets me record 6 streams and correctly shows 0SD/6HD (wan) &(ingress).  So apparently the MCT system is what matters.  and since all of the orders showed completed we decided the best course of action was to leave it how it is and working and hopefully nothing should change or re-provision on its own and it should now work correctly.  I'm excited to finally not have to deal with conflicts anymore.  
  • Also as sidenote- the bandwidth cap now shows as 47920800(wan)&(ingress)  it was 31,000,000something(forget the exact number).  which would seem to suggest that a single HD stream requires 7,986,800 (47920800divided by 6)  it doesn't give a unit of measurement oddly but I'd assume that's 7.986mbps per HD stream although it's possible its 7.9 megabytes per second.  doing the math in reverse 7,986,800 multiplied by 4 hd streams would equal 31,947,200 which sounds about right for what it was before on my system.  although my system previously would also allow 3HD+2SD.