Not hostility really. I just realized we don't really have the same priorities when it comes to this stuff. I truly think it is good that you are happy with your Charter and DirecTV service. Like you, I have a long-term interest in this topic, although not quite as long as you. My first DVR was a Sony SD DirecTivo. I've had DirecTV 3 times, Dish 3 times, went OTA + Streaming once, and have tried TWC/Spectrum more times than I can remember. I will say this for Spectrum, no contract is really nice. If it tells you anything, I've left DirecTV before my contract was up all three times. The first time didn't cost me anything since I had paid retail for my HR10-250, so returning it avoided any fees. TWC paid my DirecTV cancellation fee the second time, and no LOS at my new house helped me avoid it the third time. Excluding my current contract, I've always kept Dish past the contract expiration, and I expect that will be the case this time as well. You mention content being king, and that is truly a big priority, but what content matters for different people can vary widely. When I look at my Timers on Dish, everything except Premium channel originals (Silicon Valley, GoT, Outlander) are either on local channels, Comedy Central, or TBS. Literally everything else we watch is on Netflix, Prime Video, YouTube, Hulu or something else. We don't watch virtually any sports, so that sounds like yet another different perspective. So, given the relatively low content requirements we have, Hardware and Software feature much more prominently for us, as we want things to work well, not have conflicts, be extremely capable, etc. Because we are not beholden to a particular provider to see content we want, we can be much more discerning about other things, and, as a technologist, having the most technologically advanced (within reason) equipment is interesting as well. I don't use all the Hopper3 features, but the primary functionality is quite extraordinary.