I was a Dish customer for years, and when my receiver box died, and I couldn't get any help from them, I switched to Direct. With "new introductory" prices it was cheaper than me buying the new receiver box - only THEN did the fine people at Dish beg me to come back by offering to send me a new receiver box - this was after I drove around town at their direction looking for places to get my box fixed or even looked at. So now my Direct subscription is on hold as I'm in housing limbo land. I have to decide what I'm going to do - continue Direct or go with the local cable.

I would say that it might be a wash over which company has better customer service. At one time, I got great customer service from Dish when I needed it. Another time, I didn't. I'm not a high maintenance person. Just want the system to work when I turn my TV on - I don't order extra programs.

One other thought.... some foreign language (and there are lots of them, well beyond Spanish) programming is only available on Dish, should that be important to you.