They won't? Why? I don't understand. Too difficult?

Hardly. I have 2 antennas on a switcher with remote and can switch from one to the other to sat in a heartbeat. One antenna picks up everything aside from 1 channel at over 95%. The other channel can be found on my amp'd antenna at 80%. Good enough.

I've had DirectTV for years. My contract has been completed years ago and I'm still on the fence about switching. Dish wants to give me a sweet deal to switch...but I dunno. I really want MonstersHD and some better PQ but I think I'll wait until I see what they cook up over the next months. If I don't like it....I'm gone.

I will not, however, join my creepy cable company. From what I've seen...like most cable...they suck donkey schlong. Screw cable.

Yep, exactly. Not everyone is willing to put up an antenna. I see threads about this all the time. "I'm not putting that ugly thing on my roof." Without regard for any alternatives, like small antennas or attic mounts.

People are dense, thought you knew that.

Although, I don't know if "most" is the right term (from shaun's post). There are many still using antennas, or who still have them up and could simply switch back. I still have one in my attic. It sucked, so I put one elsewhere. But I never removed it, and it would probably work better for digital reception than it did for analog.

I agree here. I used to live in RI and we had the dish network. We upgraded to HD when we got the set and we thought the channels looked great. Until we decided we were sick of losing signal, and got Cox cable. We thought this was as good as cable could get. We moved to CT, and I will say that everything about Comcast, from the DVR to the HD to the digital to the hgh speed internet is a magnitude better.

If the HD formats can better what I see now, I can't imagine anyone not being impressed.

I personally stick with Cable even though I have Charter and they are a poor cable company as far as their service. The quality of the HD is pretty damn good though and I rarely have any problems. I don't want satellite just because I don't want the damn antennae hanging off my house.

If you're in Atlanta, you could probably just use a $20 set-top antenna like the Silver Sensor. You probably wouldn't need an outdoor antenna.

I switched from Dish to my local cable company a couple years back, one reason Dish never picked up Starz-HD, the second reason is that Dish wanted $1000 for their DVR whereas cable leased theirs for $12 a month. Then there is the issue of Dish charging $5 per box per month whereas I can split my cable each room of the house for free.

That is incorrect about splitting cable to each room. Cable companies charge rental fees for each box very comparable to satellite mirroring fees. You are comparing analog cable to full digital satellite, not the same at all.

That's true, but at least you have that option. We have one box and two tvs with analog 'basic' cable, just for those rare times we want to watch in those other two rooms. With sat, it's all or nothing, unless you split the cable off the box, in which case you have to watch the same thing on all tv's.

I didn't say people don't want to use an antenna. I said that I don't think people will want to use an OTA antenna to watch local channels and switch over to a cable or satellite box for those channels. I would imagine most people would rather have one connection that includes the locals and not have to go through the hassle of 1) figuring out HOW to connect their antenna an cable/satellite and 2) actually having to switch from analog to cable/satellite all the time.

ANd I don't mean the people in this forum, I mean the people who still don't understand why their DVDs all have black bars.

With cable, you shouldn't need an antenna. Although sometimes certain channels don't yet have deals with the local cable system. Ch 5-1 (ABC-HD) locally just got onto Comcast's system in Sept of last year, took 2 years or so to get on there. But that should be straightened out soon for almost everybody.

With satellite, the sat box is always an OTA tuner as well. So you don't need to switch inputs at all, just pick a channel. And I think they all use the local numbers. So with DirecTV my channel 5-1 is actually 5-1, not 232 or whatever my dad has on Comcast.

You shouldn't, although like you said...some providers don't carry all of their local channels. Charter in my area carries NBC, CBS, and one of the PBS stations, but if I want ABC, Fox, or the WB, I have to use an antenna. Broadcast groups like Sinclair and Frontier are extremely hostile to having their digital channels carried by cable providers, and that's a big part of the hold-up here.

Dish has recently changed their offering - so you can now get all their HD (including Voom channels) with 1 Dish 1000 satellite dish. For new customers, I doubt they are charging any more for installation of this than they would any other dish - as long as you are subscribing to an HD-inclusive package. As an existing customer, I just had to pay $49 to upgrade my Dish 500 dish and Dish 811 reciever to the Dish 1000 and ViP211, so I could access the additional HD channels.

For quantity - Dish is now leading - as you get 23 channels of HD in their standard HD packages going forward, plus more if you subscribe to HBO or Showtime. Between HBO and OTA - I get a total of 29 HD with my Dish subscription. They also say they're planning to add HD locals for 50 cities this year (though its a non-issue if you're close enough to towers to get OTA since the OTA channels are integrated so well into the reciever.).

This question was just answered for me on March 1st.

I am not paying $400 or $500 upfront to DirecTV to lease an HD-DVR for a monthly fee.

They are insane.