I was with dish for a year, and I am now with directv.
I didn't have one of those fancy HD-DVR things with dish, though I wanted one, and have one now with D*, so I can't comment on hardware, but my experience with the programming has been awesome. I have a friend who is stuck for another 12 months with dishHD and he doesn't get half the crap I do. I'll admit, his interface is slicker than mine, but my on demand owns his any day.
There's way more HD on directv and there will be for a long ass time. Dish has yet to put another bird up for HD, and they won't for a while, whereas directv will have DTV11 up and streaming content by the end of the year. I don't know where they'll get the content, maybe add those stupid ******* voom channels, or time shift everything like BEV does up in canada, but rest assured, if you get DHD, you'll almost never go without an HD channel.
Unless you're a fan of the travel chanel, which still isn't in HD on dtv.
God, that pisses me off.
You know what, **** directv.