8 years of DISH, 7 years of DTV (current sub). My overall impression is that DTV is a better, more-professional company. But DTV has been slipping badly over the last 2 years. They used to have the edge on DVR reliability, but that may be in doubt by now. DISH DVRs are much more responsive, and that gap only seems to widen over time in DISH's favor.
Programming is about the same, generally speaking. DTV has more sports paks, but you will pay dearly for them. DISH seems to have more ethnic channels. DISH has historically trailed DTV in HD channels and LIL HD channels, but we are about at saturation so it may no longer matter. Bottom line, make sure you can get the channels you need.
If the "lot of shows" includes significant prime time from the big 4, the Hopper might be right for you. I love the Hopper concept, but I would not leave DTV to get it unless DTV continues to decline, which there is no guarantee that they will not.
I left DISH originally because they took a year to get the right time zone on one of my DVRs (actually, the clock ran out [pun intended] before they ever fixed it), and because the DTivo was superior at the time in many significant ways to DISH DVRs. Imagine what that last year was like for me having to use a DVR that had the clock off by an hour. Of course the DTV DVRs turned out to be even better than the DTivos, but my understanding is that the top level DVRs from DISH have improved quite a bit. Certainly more responsive.
The bottom tier DVRs? Not so much. My mother had basic service from DISH a couple of years ago and disconnected in disgust for a number of very good reasons, including the crappy DVR and their basic incompetence.
I overlapped the services for a month to compare quality. It was mostly a wash; DTV had just a bit more mosquito noise while DISH had just a bit more quantization error noise. Most folks would not have seen the difference in a double-blind study; they were that close. In the era of HD it really is no longer an issue; HD PQ is pretty ubiquitously good and the same from every provider by now.
DISH used to be a cut-rate service, meaning their prices undercut DTV. But that's what you do as a startup, and they have been around now for some time. I don't think you can get either for less than the other these days, at least past the honeymoon period (they both make smokin' deals to new subs and basically ignore existing subs, but DTV seems to have more swag and bling to hand out; I got ShowTime free for a year, twice, just for being a loyal customer). The DVR lawsuits may have had something to do with this; DISH has to get more profit from customers to maintain overall margins these days, so their prices are no longer cut-rate.
My biggest problem with DTV is that they keep making boneheaded decisions regarding the UI that seem to make the DVR harder and harder to use every time there is an up rev, plus they screwed the pooch on reliability 2 years ago and have yet to show any ability to fix that.
If you absolutely need NFL ticket, welcome aboard. But I would not jump ship until September. Also, I am hearing that there are some other ways to get NFL that will break DTVs exclusivity, such as a Netflix sort of interface. You might want to investigate that.
Oh, and while I have been on record as calling for the head of whoever is the CEO of DTV, Charlie Ergen is just a d--k.
