I agree with you,
I think it is so funny how so many people believe the DISH receivers are better than DIRECTV's. It is all in the eye of the beholder. For me, the DIRECTV receiver is far superior to DISH, for one reason; neither DISH nor DIRECTV offer OTA locals of any kind where I live. The DIRECTV HR20 allows me to get OTA HD locals with guide data, the newest DISH HD DVR would allow me to get HD OTA locals without a guide (because I cannot subscribe to locals, which is required for this to work with DISH). That is a deal breaker for me and DISH.
Also, I may be mistaken but doesn't the newest DISH HD DVR only record one OTA channel at a time? My DIRECTV HR20 can record 2 OTA channels at once. So for me, since I cannot get locals at all via satellite, the DIRECTV receivers are far superior to DISH. I almost switched to DISH recently before I learned about these flaws with DISH receivers which would be completely unacceptable to me.