I dumped Dish for Direct and haven't looked back. YMMV as always but the only thing Dish had over Direct was the multi-room DVR and now Direct has that too.
If you want a referral for DirecTV let me know, we'll both get $10 off a month for 10 months.
My mileage varied. I was with Dish for about three years until I bought an HD tv and switched to DirecTV. I kept DirecTV for about 8 days before I cancelled and went back to Dish. At the time (about 18 months ago) DirecTV's DVR setup was so inferior to Dish, the situation with the local channels was so bad with DirecTV and my experience with their sales and service departments was so bad that it was worth the $400 to get out of it. I called Dish back and told them I made a horrible mistake and they bent over backward to get me back and give me a cherry deal on programming.
I went to the websites and set up comparable packages (Dish - America Everything vs. DirecTV - Premier). I assumed one HD tv and an SD tv setup for a second room. This is what I could figure out.
DirecTV - To get SD DVR on the second tv, it will cost an additional $99 up front with DirecTV. In order to get the promo pricing on the DirecTV Premier package, you have to agree to buy NFL Sunday Ticket. Bottom Line, your first five payments are $66.99, followed by 19 payments of $121.99 + taxes. If the NFL is important........?
Dish - $70.89 with the $15.00/month credit, but it only lasts for the first 12 months. No money upfront (other than the monthly fee). You'll have 12 more payments at roughly $86, but no NFL Sunday ticket.
For both, most of the fees for HD/DVR/Local/not being connected to the internet, etc. seem to have been eliminated and now they're getting more creative with packaging and pricing. Some people say that DirecTV's HD is a better quality HD, but in my brief experience, I couldn't tell the difference. I also have an OTA antenna and I can't tell the difference between the OTA and Sat locals. Dish does have several channels like MTV that are HD only part of the time. I haven't really found it to be bothersome, since they seem to figure out when it's important to have the channels in HD versus SD and can flip the switch. Dish also likes to "go to the mat" with different channels on occasion so you could wake up one day and find that none of the Disney channels are available in HD until their contract is renegotiated. They always seem to get it worked out, but you could be without an HD channel or two for a few months while it's worked out. I've seen it happen on a few occasions , but never with a channel I really cared about. Dish has a higher capacity DVR.
In a nutshell, if you are willing to pay in the long run, DirecTV will give you a more consistent product. If you can put up with a little inconvenience here and there, Dish will save you money in the long run. I've also had really great luck with Dish's customer service. They always seem to find a way to adequately compensate for any perceived shortcomings, as long as my expectations have been reasonable. DirecTV seemed to have a "That's the way it is" attitude. You'll have fewer concerns with DirecTV.
Both have their pluses and minuses. You just need to decide which channels and packages you really want and go from there. I'm with Dish. ESPN and Comedy Central are always on look great. My DVR works great for any tv with only one box. I have all the channels I want and I'm paying about $60/months with Dish.
Good luck.
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