So what I am getting out of this then is that if you have maxed out on your "leased" tuner count with Dish, then at that time you can purchase your own an add it to your account to get more.
Leased or owned, Dish is going to ding you the same fees, the fees might be named a little different, but the end dollar amount is going to be the same.
I suppose the other advantage with purchasing as noted above is that if you do cancel your service, you will not be dinged with an early cancellation fee. However, you will have the cost of your receiver, so if you can resell your receiver for more than what the cancellation fee might have been, you would come out ahead ... otherwise ... you would still be in the red. But then you have the hassle of trying to unload the thing ...
Again though, if one is going to invest that much money in a receiver, I see such an individual not easily switching or leaving anyway. To spend that much money I would think one would be of the mindset that they have chosen their provider and this is who they plan on being with for a good number of years.
If you only have one or two or even three receivers, it makes more sense to me to just lease and use the extra money for programming or ... whatever.