I'm a recent convert (less than 1 week) to D* from Comcast. About 99% of the reason is NFL:ST in HD. I haven't gotten to try that yet, but compared to Comcast and locals OTA, the D* HD channels are far worse in quality.
Here in Little Rock, we had: INHD1/2, TNTHD, DISC-HD, STARZ-HD...