Bob I do not want to cancel, but I find your statement about still watching stuff on the hard drive a little misleading. Guess if all you record on is the internal hard drive of the receiver this would be true, but I started using external hard drives as soon as they were allowed and they dont work without an antenna. There are programs that I have recorded that I want to save and the built in hard drives are extremely limited. Again I do not want to cancel Dish Network because it is so graet, but I have determined that there is no access to the externally archived recordings without the Dish antenna connected. Not sure what would happen if you had the antenna connected but without service. My thinking is that if a person actually cancelled their service they would not be able to access archived recordings from their external hard drive so your statement is not true. I could be wrong about this, but this is something I would have to think about myself. I am rather fond of the many recorded programs that I have saved to external hard drive. Maybe this is something I should ask Dish about, but I am not sure I am going to like what I find out. The ability to save progams on an external hard drive and their equipment is extremely nice. I don't think recordings would be accessable after the service is cancelled. This is something to think about.
With the fact that you might lose programs as you switch providers, limited ability to save it on a computer (more flexibility to save programs, take them with you with laptop, save to DVD, etc), and the increased fees, it makes more sense to go with a separate media center.