I went to cable for the local HD about 6mths ago. Hate it! But have to stay because I just do not know when Direct TV will have their "final" choice in equipment, and formats picked. Anyone know when all the changes they are making are going to be over or at least worth the investment for a reasonable amount of time?

Depends what you are looking for. The new MPEG-4 HD locals are rolling out so if you are in a reasonable size market you should be getting these within the next 12 months. You can get a new R-20 receiver "free" after discount, but you will need a new dish and (if you need more than 4 tuners) a new multiswitch. There will supposedly be a new HD PVR (DirecTV's own, not Tivo) later in 2006.
But DirecTV is going to a rental model in a couple of months so this might influence your decision one way or another.

That sounds right, but I have asked in other threads about the cabling for this and nobody seems to know. The new dish comes with a multiswitch with four outputs, but it looks like more than four cables would have to go directly from the LNBs to a multiswitch with more than four outputs...and does the new dish allow direct access to all of the different cables so they can be extended down into the house? In other word, how many cables would be needed and can it even be done?

I'll tell you one thing. If it takes more than one RG-6 I'll be extremely upset. I just put new siding on my house. In the process I put all the wires in the walls, including an access panel for the box that was on the outside. The RG-6 runs from the box thru the studs and down in to the basement. To run any more wires would be nearly impossible. Unless I ran it on top of the siding of course.

I know what everyone is thinking. Why didn't I run it in emt or pvc. Well, I just didn't think of it at the time.

Ernie - the new dish has four outputs so you can connect four tuners. If you need more than four you connect the four lines to the inputs of a new type of multiswitch designed for the MPEG-4 satellites - currently I think only a Zinwell 6x8 is available. The two extra multiswitch inputs are for people using additional dishes for their locals and for international stations. The multiswitch gives eight outputs. And you can stack them just like the old multiswitches.
What you can't do is diplex OTA signals onto the same lines as the sat signals, because the MPEG-4 signals use frequencies in the same band as the OTA signals.

So my Winegard Square Shooter needs a second line going to my Satellite box? I wonder where it will plug in to.