Quote Originally Posted by kexodusc
Toenail buddy, (ya know I almost always start to call you "Hangnail" for some reason...no offense).
I abandonned the Dish for Digital Cable and haven't looked back. Straight Digital TV is hit and miss IMO, the Dish was way better early on, but not any more...in a region with "turbulent" weather, it was becoming too problematic. And some of the stations receive so much compression that analogue looks better, but I blame the Dish provider for that, not the technology...
Sometimes the format isn't to blame, a lot of stations send out crappy digital signals still and Digital Cable doesn't make this any better.
Best I can tell you is to see if you can hunt down a few people who subscribe to either, and compare for yourself...you might have to do this in a store, but you won't hear about service quality and signal interruptions. From what I hear it varies from region to region as to weather Digital Cable or a Dish is better.
My PVR is HD....the only beef with HD I have is that it's still early on and the technology is ahead of network programming. Here in Canada we get all the Toronto Blue Jays baseball home games in a stunning HD format (Rogers, the HD cable provider owns the team and Skydome - now called Rogers Centre- great MLB package rates), the away games are mostly just digital 480p (I believe) upsampled to 1080i (which is still an improvement over the non HD channel when I flip for comparison), and if the host city has the technology a few away games are HD as well...same goes for the MLB package I subscribe too, so far maybe 1/2 of them have been HD...it's awesome, but hard to go back once you're spoiled.

Almost everything is Dolby Digital 5.1, but be warned, some local programming, live news/sports shows especially, haven't figured it out yet and sometimes dialogue isn't concentrated in the front center, but rather through all 5 channels like a 5 channel dsp or somethign...I think this is a mixing/engineering snafu though, and I'm sure they'll catch on eventually.

It's not for eveyone, but after years of only watching sports, the Simpsons, and the odd other program, I've fallen in love with TV again...PVR is a dream, way easier and more convenient than programming a VCR!!!

The cable box is only a few $/month above what I'm paying now, the HD channels are included in the package I'm already paying for. I may get a set with built in tuner and also the cable box upgrade to have some flexibility. I understand antennas are cheap and I've got a 3rd floor attic with access at both ends for mounting options.