You forgot about the $6/mo OTA guide data fee. The latest software requires you to subscribe to locals in order to get even a sub-standard form of guide data.
As far as stability goes, I think it is actually LESS stable than before. I'm finding that I'm rebooting a lot more often than with L189. What happens is that I loose the ability to do things with the remote, such as stretch the picture, or even bring up the DVR menu. When this happens, I have to reboot to fix it.
Don't wait for a 942. With Dish's track record, do you think they will be any better off than the 921 people? I doubt it. I suspect they will be even more screwed than we 921 people are. It isn't going to have MPEG-4, and it will be useless less than a year after it was released.
Right now, I would say, don't buy any Dish equipment, try the HDTivo from DirecTV.
But, hey, I will admit I am biased right now. Dish has got me so upset that I want to divert as many as possible from buying their stuff. They wasted $1000 in capitol, and $600 in subscription fees this past year, and I would like to see them loose at least that much themselves from lost sales. No offense to Scott and Claude that helped me get my 921 a year ago, they are great people.