I just finished making the jump from cable to satellite and couldn't be happier with my Hughes system (a couple of E25's).

Here's why:

In looking at all the systems out there, it really boiled down to a "user interface/ease of use" issue for me.

DirtTV's channel groupings are more logical than Dish Network's and that makes wading thur all the channels easier. Addtionally, Dish's choices in recievers are very limited - if you don't like the interface, to bad.

So with DirectTV you can select receivers from Sony, RCA, and Hughes. Each of these have there own take on the interface while the feature sets (Dolby Digital, VCR control, etc.) are about even. The Sony's are a little more pricey than RCA and Hughes, but excessively so.

What I did was visit my friendly Best Buys and GoodGuys stores and just played with each model. I even downloaded the manuals and read up on how they operate and went back to the stores and played some more. Sort of pissed off the sales people after a while, but they got over it:)

After all this, it looked like to me that the Hghes had the most going for it. Seems like they put a lot of thought into their reciever and now that I have used it for a while (and my family), I'm sure they did.
I won't bore you with my opinions of why, but I will suggest that you REALLY check these things out, personally.

Note that a great place to buy a system is DishDirect (www.dishdirect.com), great prices and really good customer support.