I have read these debates all the time and i have been relatively quiet on this matter, but i think I will give my opinion now. If price is what matters to you, then either one will be fine. When it all comes down to it, they are not that far apart on pricing. Their promos are different and with this particular one, Dish does have an advantage. As far as their regular pricing, there is really not that much different. The base packages look like Dish is cheaper, but Dish does nickel and dime you to death on things like local channels and not having a phone line hooked up to the receiver. Both of these are free with Directv.
When it come to customer service, Directv has them beat by a mile. I have had both and to me there is no comparison. I had Dish twice in a years time. The first time, I could not get a reliable signal. I had to call 3 times before they finally sent some one to my house to look at it. The tech they finally sent told me I could not get a LOS because of trees. Which made me ask, why did they install the thing ion the first place. Well a few months later I had a friend over that worked for Dish at one time. We were talking about my situation and he said my LOS was fine and there must be something else wrong. Well I was with Comcast at the time and was getting hammered with pricing, and Dish kept calling me asking me to come back, so I gave them another try. The install came and went fine and the installer said they went up and realligned my Dish which should solve the problem I had before. The next day, I was losing signals again. I called and set up a service call and they no showed me twice. When they finally sent someone, they tightened up my lines and said that was the problem. The next day, the same problem. Someone else came. They said the mount was loose on my dish and they tightened it so now it should be fixed. next day, guess what, I lost my signal again.
I finally decided to go up on the house and see if i could find anything. I am scared of heights so this was a big step for me. After I got up on the house, I wiggled my dish and I swear I could turn the thing 360 degrees around. It was that loose. Three Dish techs havd been up there and could not see this was nuts. I tightened it back up, with my wife helping me with the signal strengths. But every few days I would have to go up on the house and tighten it up again. I finally had enough and called and cancelled. To their credit they let me go with no fees, even though I was with them more than 30 days, but I can't shake that experience from my mind.
Don't get me wrong, Directv is not perfect, but I do feel for the most part, they treat me fairly and that is all I can ask. They show up when they say they will and when they say it is fixed, it is fixed. Just my 2 cents.