Digital Cable Vs satelite

If your only concern is losing the picture during a heavy rain, invest in a larger dish. You can use up to a 30" dish for digital satellite which (in theory) gives you 177% more signal than the 18" dish. Still, don't expect more than about 300 lines of resolution from Dish or DirecTv. Both services have had to use severe compression due to carrying of local broadcasts.

Good analysis Ed. I had pretty much decided to go with CATV-HD, but considering the factors you pointed out, I'm now confirmed on that decision. Another factor that entered in was the fact that my provider (Comcast) offers a $400 buy-back of your DSS box (@$25/month to be sure, but it still helps).

Eh, sadly, at this stage, on demand is SD only. I expect the DVR HD boxes relatively soon--I'm in Northern Virginia and they have launched in DC. Given the content available in HD, being able to timeshift would be nice indeed.

HRcapers, DirecTV does have HD feeds, and its true HD--720p or 1080i. There is also another satellite service being launched--Voom!--which is HD only...

Wish Comcast would have bought my DirecTV HD box. Sold it on Videogon instead, but I didn't get $400 for it...

thanks ed,i just got my digital catv hook up today and now trying to figure out how to hook it up to my receiver to get 5.1 sound..please help....anyone??

Ttrph;you should have a coax or toslinc-out, that goes to your receiver. Then you may have to go into the menu and select/activate. Just keep in mind chs 01 -to 99 are all analog;all the time. For that to go to the receiver,you need a set of analog ics to another input on the receiver. If you get local HD, that is digital all the time.
Re. Voom---No it ain't all HD all the time. They carry many SD chsnnels--But 40 HD stations ain't bad huh?