Tron,
This place in Melbourne has hundreds of dishes ranging from 18 inches to 12 feet in diameter for only $10 each. My mouth was watering.

Everytime I go on a business trip there, my wife knows that I will be coming home with at least one more dish.
I have read that a matched feedhorn really helps pull in the signals and sees 100% of your dish. Without a matched feedhorn it may only see 1m of the dish and still get a good signal strength, but the signal strength would be higher if it saw the total 1.2m of the dish as in my case.
I have also read that an offset antenna often has a higher gain than a prime focus antenna due to the feed supports being in the way on the prime focus. The Channel Master dishes are made really well and keep their shape. This also gives a higher signal strength compared to a UPS shipable mesh dish of simular size. This said, I am hoping my Channel Master 1.2m dish on C-Band works as good as a standard 5 or 6 foot UPS shipable mesh dish. I believe it will, I just need to experiment a little after I finish building my mount for the dish.