Around these parts, (SE PA) I think Comcast intentionally gives customers in New Jersey the good stuff, and leaves the crappy stuff for this area. Our area's digital cable had poor PQ, digital boxes with slow, cumbersome navigation menus, advertisements in the menu, poor channel lineup and it was expensive. Hence our switch to D* which we have been extremely happy with, save the occasional spontaneous receiver resets, rain fade, and that mysterious half hour locals outage a few weeks ago.
My father-in-law lives in NJ, and while visiting there I got to sample his 62" HDTV with the New Jersey version of Comcast. The menus were quick, intuitive, and the picture was awesome. Still could tell that there were artifacts in the HD broadcast, but it was pretty minimal. Also told us that when they had a problem with the signal being insufficient resulting in some problems Comcast was right out there promptly to fix it. Their channel line up was pretty extensive as well. Had we had that level of service in this area I doubt we would have been compelled to switch to D* other than the price.
However now Comcast has thouroghly pissed us off and now having experienced the pleasure that is D*, it is highly unlikely that we would ever switch back. They would just about have to give us a year for free and pay us for the privilege of being their customer and even then I would have to question surrendering my beloved dish. Besides, I'm pretty sure I'm going to go with NFL ST next year.