Well basically it all boils down to your needs. The main factors are price and programming. Which provider has the channels you want for the price you are willing to pay? Then, it's the equipment.
I've had Dish for many years with the exception of having U-verse for 7 months. I've always been pretty happy with Dish, other than their disputes, price hikes and generally awful phone support.
Well more and more providers are having disputes so that's pretty well beyond my control. The price hikes, while they suck, most of the time Dish is just responding to everyone else's price hikes, so can't do anything about that other than switching every two years which to me isn't worth it. DIRT took care of the phone support issue (at least for those of us that know about them.)
While the Hopper may be a tad anemic with the tuner count, it makes it up with faster speed, more hard drive space, better interface, and other things like PTAT, AutoHop, Sling and better EHD support. It's just overall better technology. I personally like having multiple Hoppers for redundancy, and the ability to keep separate timers/recording lists. That way there's no fights about hard drive space and tuners.
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