Dish satelite vs Cable quality?

I had cable for over 5 years, then the pricing sent me looking for something better. I now have a Dish 500 set up, with a receiver that receives dolby digital. I do not have HDTV so I cannot comment on it. As to the others, the dish kills the cable in every way. Sound, picture, and price. I'm watching on a 36 in television, so I have no idea how it would stack up larger ones.

both direct TV and dish network need only 1 single dish to receive the high definition programming. The direct TV high definition dish actually looks at 3 different satellites where the dish is only 2 satellites.

Face it, signal quality and program availability of HD on digital cable is going to depend upon your local provider and the signal you get in your house (how far are you from the headend, how much loss). Program availability of DirecTV/Echostar is pretty much a knowable quantity, but signal quality there will depend upon your view to the equator and how well your dish is set up. Direct comparisons seem a little difficult.

I ended ditching DirecTV for Comcast digital CATV in Virginia. For me, the +'s of CATV were:

- more HD programming content I liked
- better picture quality on standard def
- "on demand" programming
- single bill bundled w/internet service
- faster channel changing speed (no kidding, SAT is *slow* changing channels)

The only benefits of SAT were, in my mind, better DVR (TiVo) integration (but note, no HDTV box w/DVR capabilities). Cost for both was about the same.

I originally had Comcast Digital Cable in Baltimore and 2 years ago switched to Directv. My reason for switching was due to Comcast's poor service and price increases. Several times the cable would go out, and Comcast would send a signal to the digital box and couldn't find the problem. They wanted me to wait for someone to come out and look at the problem and this meant that I had to stay home and wait. Most of the time it cleared up on its own in a few days, without a service man even coming out. After several occurances I finally switched.
Since then, I have had no problems with Directv, other than the picture going out for 5-10 minutes during heavy storms. At least I can expect that though.
The picture from Directv is more consistent between channels, but to me, most standard TV channels looked better through cable than Directv. Directv just has a blurry look to most channels, some are better than others though. I have a 51" TV, but do not yet have HD hooked up because I'm waiting for the HD boxes to go down in price.
I was paying nearly $70/mo for Digital cable, and now pay only $45/mo and that includes Tivo.

Here is something I didn't expect: Regional differances in Satellite reception(?)!

I live on the West Coast and my Dish signal is always excellant, even with excessive cloud cover. I installed a Direct TV High Definition antenna for my Father-In-Law in the Midwest and excessive cloud cover scrambles the signal. This is on normal (non-HD) as well as for HD signals. I was so blown away by this that I got him one of those very tall, roof mounted UHF antennas so he can watch 'Raymond'.