I'll probably post this wherever I think it's relevant so apologies in advance if it appears in multiple threads...
If you're switching from Dish and have been a customer for a while, when you call to cancel, be very polite and calm and explain to them that this was a hard decision (it really was for me). They waived my early termination fee. I had 10 months left on my current commitment. Been a Dish customer for somewhere around 13 to 15 years. They were VERY nice to me as I was requesting the termination. I know some folks aren't in a commitment any more so for them it's not an issue. But for anyone that IS, this could be an important piece of making the decision. The only thing is, I'm sure it depends on a lot of factors that you won't know until you're actually canceling.
I am sending back 2 E* DVRs as well as the LNBs (my D* installer took down the old dish). They said it's going to take a "couple weeks" to unbundle my account (I'm bundled with my phone company) and they have to do that before sending the boxes to return the receivers. So my wife gets an extra couple weeks to finish watching the stuff she has on the E* DVRs. It was nice to see we could turn them on and watch the DVR'ed stuff when the boxes aren't connected to anything but the TV.