First and foremost there is the price. Overall, Dish Network has the cheaper plans - or at least advertises cheaper plans. If you want basic local channels and your standard extras such as ESPN, USA, Disney, etc. You really could go either way. DIRECTV offers cheaper packages that they don't normally advertise on most sites. These packages are most often advertised to Spanish customers. I have one of these packages. At the time I ordered, it was called "Option Extra" - that's my English translation anyway. I essentially had all the same channels I had before with Dish Network with a few exceptions. Now you can find a similar package advertised as "Family Choice" but it doesn't have as many channels as we got with our package. Dish Network's answer to that was "DishFamily", which is again $10.00 cheaper. We got all the main channels we wanted - ESPN, TBS, USA, TLC. We did miss out on HGTV and ABC Family. So the price war goes to Dish Network.

Second there is the user interface. Dish Network is very blocky and has not changed much over the years. It is very easy to use and very easy to read. As far as I've seen it is the same on each receiver model. DIRECTV on the other hand, varies depending on the model. For example, you will see a different menu if you are using their standard receiver as opposed to TiVo. DIRECTV has more eye candy effects and can tend to be a little slower - especially on the TiVo model. On their standard model, it takes two clicks just to get to the guide. One thing that really annoys me with DIRECTV is that they don't do anything to mark the channels you don't have in the guide. If you don't have a certain channel with Dish Network, that channel will show up in red on the guide. So for ease of use, Dish Network wins again. Sorry DIRECTV, sometimes less is more.

If you are paying for satellite TV, I highly recommend you get DVR service. It's so cheap and easy now that you'd be crazy not to. DVR service is $5.00 per month on both systems - no matter how many TV's you have DVR service on. Now here is where DIRECTV really shines. DIRECTV partnered early with TiVo. TiVo is a better DVR system because it is show based rather than time based. What this means is that if you set up a timer or season pass to a certain show, and your show happens to get rescheduled to another time or another night, TiVo is smart enough to pick that up. TiVo also knows if your show is a re-run or not and you can tell it not to record re-runs. As TiVo learns your viewing and recording preferences, it will record shows it thinks you may like to watch with the free space it has available on the hard drive. I've found this to be quite nice if there is nothing on and I don't want to watch something I've recorded, or even if I need to find a show for my kids to watch. On top of all this, if you want to record something and watch something else on the same TV, only DIRECTV will allow you to do this. So for DVR service, DIRECTV wins hands down, and for many, that might be enough to take the cake, for others, price and ease of use might be the key.