Well, which city local (LIL, I presume) are you viewing? Overall, the HD is pretty good and reliable on Dish, however, there are some instances here and there were the picture will pixel or be impaired for just a second, but I have seen this occur often enough on OTA directly connected to my TV (I have great signal for OTA) and Direct TV has such hiccups, as well, although Nat Geo on Dish is a bit odd.
I believe we are all witnessing the early days of this new technology (Digital for OTA's and MPEG4 for satellite) and its kinks, as well as engineers tweaking and fiddling to fit more sub-channels on OTA and concomitant degraded PQ OTA connected to TV, and satellite engineers doing the same thing for uplinking. I think the current batch is only the 2nd generation of MPEG4 live streaming "on the fly" encoders. They will get better, as will the OTA broadcasters get their MPEG2 digital done right, as well. Now, if broadcasters will take care with the PSIP, and get that right.