I see the HD guide as more of an incremental update than anything groundbreaking. Now there is all this screen real estate, yet you can still only see 1.5 hours of the guide at a time going left to right and 3-6 channels top to bottom (depending on the level of banner spam.)
It is faster, which is a major plus, but beyond that it is the same old guide with more pixels.
The thing I still miss the most from Dish (beyond BBCAHD) is the ability to get a real overview of the channel landscape via the guide. I can understand why D* might want to avoid major changes in their GUI for the sake of being seamless, but I honestly don't need to be able to read the guide from 75 feet away. At 15 feet away on my 50" - the text could be 1/3 the size and it would still be very comfortable to read and I'd be able to see 3 times as much at once.
Hopefully they eventually offer the ability to alter the guide (ala Dish) to one's liking.