We had Dish for a bit in our rental house. There are certainly lots of channels available but it is not as "flick friendly" as I like. It takes a little bip of time between channels and doesn’t have as good a guide as Time Warner’s Advanced Box.
I found callin gthe 800 number was little help. If I called after business hours it was basically "call back during business hours." Dish does not have a local office - getting someone out to reset the dish or look at a problem is a real task. We had this in a rental house. Three people stole the "chip" from the unit causing a couple days without service each time (and paying for a new card) .
They might have improved in the last year but I was unhappy with reception in heavy storms. Connection in our area was difficult. Service was near impossible. If you live in an area where you can’t get really good digital cable then I guess it will work but I did not look forward to coming home and watching TV the way I do now with Time Warner.