Satellite or CATV?

The only thing, Aaron, is that Dish Network (at least for many years) did not give nearly as many options for out of town sports as DirecTV. If that's important to BlueSwan, it's something worth looking into. I wish my damn friends at the Justice Department would just let the stupid merger go through, anyway. (Actually, they're right...it *would* kill competition and create a mammoth manopoly).

dish network high definition receiver isn't as transparent as it should be,I would go direct TV high definition receiver I believe it's more transparent

There is no comparison between Comcast and Directv. Comcast blows. And to add insult to injury, they are more expensive. I was never so happy as the day Directv started carrying all my local channels including WB and UPN. (Except maybe when they came out with a combination Directv/Tivo unit.)

Hmmm... I'll offer a different opinion than seemingly everyone else. At my old house (I moved in June), I had Comcast digital cable and did not like the service--lots of drop outs and service problems. When I moved, my intent was to switch to DirecTV, but I still needed CATV for broadband, so I got that hooked up first. The digital was *significantly* better at my new house--signal stronger, less reliability problems. Because I wanted HDTV, I still ended up laying out roughly $600 for an HDTV SAT STB, and subscribed to DirecTV. (As an aside, I thought I'd done the right thing by getting multiple RG6--2--runs to each room, but I still don't have enough inside wiring to support TiVo DirecTV.) I don't think the DirecTV picture is as good as Comcast's digital cable, but whoa! the HDTV looked *good*! I did lose a bunch of movie channels, however. Just when I thought I was happy, I find out that Comcast in my area is rolling out (has rolled out) HDTV over CATV--including the local OTA affiliates. I find both services cost-competitive. Having had both, if I was starting over right now, I'd definitely go back to Comcast for digital w/HDTV and lose the ugly 3 LNB dish on my terrace.

Moral of the story, might want to talk to your CATV provider about their upgrade plans. Also might want to check signal strength in your area before subscribing.

Sound is what most of the people on this forum would be after. I've had both cable, and now Dish network. I have one of the receivers that puts out dolby digital via toslink, that I have run into an MSB link. It's better than any tuner that I've ever heard, and no commercials to boot. Also many, many music channels to choose from.