Not sure if this is the area to ask this question, but when comparing these sat companies to cable like Mediacom, is the HD quality better, or more compressed with Satellite? And which Sat company has beter hardware, both in DVR, and quality? I'm trying to make a decision between these two because Mediacom will not carry the Big Ten Network....thanks in advance!

Opinions on both sides. Personally I believe D* has better hardware.

Sorry, did the administrators change the D word? What was your answer? Anyone else chime in on the subject?

D* supposedly has really good HD quality on its MPEG4 birds.

OK, I must have missed something, can you not type the whole name of the dish company in this forum??? What's the deal? Why is that against the rules moderators? Or am I just being dumb here?

DirecTV. Some people are too lazy to type the whole seven letters.

It is an accepted abbreviation in these forums. It has to do with the names of some of the original DBS companies like Primestar and Echostar(Dish). They were/are abbreviated as P* and E*, so subsequently for the sake of similarity DirecTV became D*.

For Newbies, there should be a stick on these shortcuts:) On other forums, moderators can remove words that are not allowed, so I thought that was happeneing here. I WAS just missing something.

I have read the post and even more confused by the Terms D and E--I currently have Direct and wish to upgrade to HD. Direct does not treat existing customers -they want a charge of $299 for the HDDVR. Dish will give me whole new system for no charge. I am sure that they probably treat their existing customers the same way.
Which has the better HD programming-I am very confused. HELP!!!!!!!!!

is is worth the cost to stay with DIRECT>???? I have had no problem with their programming or service but it does hack me off to be charged for the upgrade after being a loyal customer for many years. They are aware of the DISH offer and it does not seem to make a difference. any suggetions?
also- is there a difference in the HDDVR that Dish offers as compared to the one that Direct has now?

I have a Dish 722 HDDVR. I also have two TiVos that I have had for seven years. I like the Dish 722 better than TiVo, but I do not have any experience with DirectTVs DVR.

In the past, Directv's receivers were superior to E*'s. Over the past few years, that has changed and many know feel they are the same, the HR20 allowing pass-through of native resolution while the 211 has better color fidelity.

Re DVRs, E*s 622/722 models are deemed superior to D*'s, from what I've read.