With the right equipment 1080i can be made to pretty much look identical to 1080p. It looks worse because they are lower than spec resolution and compressed.
The guy that installed my dish didn't do a good job aiming. I know the vip722 reading for signal is a little low but it was UNDER 40. I got it above 70 myself the next weekend. That coresponds to about 90 on a signal meter. Still need to mess with skew though because thats off too.
Early February would have been my guess just based on that being the timeframe for starting tiers for HD, etc. There are a lot of changes around that timeframe that has been confirmed.
