So I am looking to ditch my analog Comcast cable and Dish Network via ATT is offering free hd for one year and I had a few questions.

Will I get local channels in high-def? Like fox for example...because I want to watch my local team the 49ers in high-def on sundays...

Also what is the quality like on dish versus cable?? Pertaining to high-def and digital feeds?

If you subscribe to *E locals and HD is offered in your city then you'll get HD local channels. Here's a link to the current local HD cities. *E announced earlier this month that 2 additional satellites will be launched in December giving them much greater capacity to offer additional HD channels, including locals in smaller markets.

http://ekb.dbstalk.com/hdlocal.htm

Here's my take on picture quality. Compared to regular cable the satellite picture is somewhat better in HD and much better for most SD channels. If you have Fios available the picture quality looks the same to me. My son has Verizon Fios feeding a 42" LCD and the picture couldn't be better for his setup. I still think my *E HD looks better than his, but that's because I have a Panasonic Plasma which I prefer over a LCD, but that's a TV issue and not a signal source issue.

Also, you might try posting your question on the *E HD area of the DBSTalk forum.

http://www.dbstalk.com/forumdisplay.php?s=&daysprune=30&f=101

Hope this helps.

http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?t=863260

If your in the Bay Area, Dish does offer KTVU plus the other Big 3 in HD.
If your in the Sacramento area, FOX40 is not included but the other Big 3 in HD are.
If your in the Monterey/Salinas area, Dish currently doesn't offer your locals in HD.

All Dish HD receivers include a OTA HD tuner, so you can also recieve you HD locals that way.

So I am looking to ditch my analog Comcast cable and Dish Network via ATT is offering free hd for one year and I had a few questions.

Will I get local channels in high-def? Like fox for example...because I want to watch my local team the 49ers in high-def on sundays...

Also what is the quality like on dish versus cable?? Pertaining to high-def and digital feeds?

Have you tried the cable HD signals? All satellite providers re-encode the channels to lower bit-rate and in most cases to a lower resolution. Some cable companies also do re-encoding, but not all. Here in Central KY Comcast does NOT alter any of the HD channels, so the picture quality is the same as the original source.

See this thread to read what Dish just did for HBO, Showtime and HDNet
http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?t=866189

You should check out if your local cable does any re-encoding before going to satellite which is guaranteed to be lower resolution and lower bit rate than the original source.

Mike