[pnz1]

I love DISH, too. Anyone with Direct? How is it?

[Tree of Liberty]

I have direcTV and love it. I visit some home theater forums, and someone on one just did a side by side comparison on a big-screen. The only really big difference between the two was slightly fewer compression artifiacts with DirecTV. As far as hardware goes, if you want HDTV with dish, you'll need a second dish, plus a module to plug into your STB to get all the offerings. With DirecTV, it's all through one (oval) dish. I think DirecTV provides more local channels, too, if that's an issue.

[Poser]

I have Direct Tv. It works well and costs about the same as cable. If you want local channels, it costs about $10 more than the cable.

I have cable modem, so I pay $10 a month to get the sub-basic cable. Every cable system has one, but they don't advertise it. The sub-basic cable has your local broadcast channels only.

I can switch back and forth from the cable to the dish.

[spectr17]

DIRECTV is much better than old CATV here. The NHL "On Ice" hockey package is da bomb as they say in Baghdad.