Getting a TV channel is (in my simplified explanation ) a three step process.

1) Cable network produces signal.
2) Provider compresses / otherwise messes with signal.
3) You watch signal.

With that in mind, I have two comments.

Comment A:
To my knowledge, there are no networks that currently produce a 1080p signal. It doesn't matter what happens farther down the chain; you can't go higher than the source. So your Uverse service does not provide channels in 1080p, but, rather, in 720p, or 1080i.

Comment B:
The vast majority of people (according to my limited internet research) state that Uverse HD doesn't look as good as standard cable HD. From what I can find, most cable providers allocate about 15-20mbit/s per HD channel, while Uverse allocates 7. Uverse does use a different compression scheme that improves quality per bit, but 7 vs 15-20 is a big difference, and most people will notice the discrepancy on HD channels. It's often said that Uverse looks "softer," without the fine-grain detail provided in the higher quality cable streams.

Anyway, like I said at first, I'm glad you like your Uverse better, and I'm not trying to say yours doesn't look better. Maybe you had a crappy cable feed or something. Just trying to point out for those who might be considering Uverse that the TV portion, at least, is likely to be of a slightly lower quality than standard cable. It does come with some other benefits though, and, of course, the internet speed is phenomenal for the price.