Blog to Offer Peek at AT&T IPTV

AT&T Inc. has been quietly beta-testing its Internet-protocol-TV product, U-Verse, in San Antonio, but it has within that test base a potential nightmare client -- a technologically savvy blogger.

Alan Weinkrantz, a technology-public-relations firm owner, will begin Monday to detail his impressions of the product and relate the "save" offer made to him when he dropped his Time Warner Cable service in his blog (www.satechblog.com). He intends to continue his review throughout his four-month trial of the product.

Weinkrantz is the personal publicist of Jeff Pulver, co-founder of Vonage Holdings Corp., the voice-over-Internet-protocol company. He also has technology clients, although AT&T is not one of them, he stressed.

"I don't hate the phone company. I don't hate the cable company. I'm just having fun," he said of the blog.

So far, he misses his Time Warner-delivered HDTV and his digital-video-recorder service, he said. But he's impressed that his television screen now has its own IP address and he loves having a home media gateway controlling three TVs, he added.