Wow! Looks like this is happening at the right time for me! I've been a Dish customer since 1998 and a satellite customer since 1994 (DirecTV first). Our cable system is completely worthless and has been for a very long time. Even now, the digital side has very little - if any - HD. That meant from '94, the only reasonable option was satellite.
I've been using an external antenna to receive local HD since before Dish even had any HD (thanks to the antenna input in my Dish 622 receiver and its HD predecessor.) I receive seventeen channels via the antenna (since they're all digital now, that doesn't mean seventeen separate stations!) ...and that includes some locals Dish doesn't have in their lineup - and they should.
Uverse has just been turned on for my neighborhood, and since my wife and I are AT&T/SBC/Pacific Bell/Pacific Telephone retirees, we will be able to get the service at a substantial discount (close to half what we're currently paying Dish.) There's no excuse for staying with satellite under those conditions. The one (small) problem I will have is some of the same stations Dish doesn't carry as local, Uverse doesn't either - and we watch one of them a lot! That means I'm going to have to subscribe to Tivo, too. The plus side of that is I can record some programs OTA on Tivo in even better quality than I will get through Uverse! I can't find a down side!
I'm going to run out of inputs to my Outlaw 990 pre/processor with Blu-Ray, Uverse and Tivo, but the 998 is coming (soon, I hope), and it should take care of that. In the meantime, I'll have to switch both the 990 and the TV to get picture from all the inputs. (I know there are ways to solve this short of a new processor, but I want the processor, and have been looking forward to it.)
I think that kinda means I won't have much to say in this forum when the conversion is done. Too bad I just heard about you. There were times in years past I would have LOVED to have a place to rant.