I set-up and activated my 942 last night (replaced my 522) and everything went perfect. The unit originally came to me pre-activated but would only pull in Detroit stations (not good since I'm in No. California) because I bought the store demo unit from Dishstore. That was easily rectified with a 15 minute phone call to a super nice (and knowledgeable) CSR who walked me through the whole process, including scanning for my local OTA HD channels. There was no upselling & no remarks about it being a legacy unit and I should have bought/leased the 622 (622 was never mentioned in fact). I confirmed my bill will be unchanged (AT120 + Locals) and that my account will remain undisturbed.
The 942 is a sweet machine. It's pretty much a clone to my 522 (which I loved) except I can now watch and record OTA HD and have the option for Pocket Dish. I can't see needing that though because when I travel I just burn a few DVR shows to DVD and watch them on my laptop.
I get 30 local channels in HD and that is the bulk of my viewing. Except for watching the San Jose Sharks in HD (FSN) I'm not wanting for any of the other channels so the 622 won't be missed. The 942 does a respectable job in upscaling the SD picture to my DLP TV and the picture (and sound) though HDMI is very nice. A nice bonus is that it outputs 720P to my projector through component at the same time as sending the 720P signal through HDMI to the TV. HDTV on my projector is sweet!
On another note, I've been a Dish subscriber since 1997 and have never had the horror story experiences I read about here. I started with the original DishPlayer and then progressed to the 501, then a 508, then the 522 and now the 942. Dish CSR's have alway been polite, fair and knowledable. I'm grandfathered in with warranty at $2.99 per month and allow them to charge my card automatically every month. I've only needed their warranty service twice but both times they shipped out replacement recievers (no shipping charge due to auto pay) and credited me back immediatley upon recieving the defective unit.
My 522 was located in a very remote part of the house (not near a phone line) and a quick e-mail to the CEO's office got a waiver put on the account to not charge the $5.00 "no phone line" fee. Hopefully this will carry over to the 942, we'll see.
Sorry to hear about the grief the rest of you are suffering but for me, Dish has always been nice, responsive and fair. Of course I was always the teachers pet in school too.