I'd always take OTA first as well, but uncrules brought up an interesting point in my original thread. That being the fact taht OTA is mpeg2 while HD-lil is mpeg4 and takes up less space when recorded. I thought this was an excellent point in that it pertains to both the HR-series and the ViP series DVRs. All things considered, I would still record OTA instead of HD-lil on Dish because like i said, Dish HD-lil is pure rubbish. However if D* offers marginal improvement in this capacity, its something else to consider in just being to save space on the DVR without sacrificing so much in the way of quality as I would with E*...