During really bad weather you get bad reception with Dish too. If I were you just go to both Direct and Dish T.V websites and see what they have to offer. I have had Dish for 5 years and now have Dish H D and have been very satisfied with their tech support and their picture quality. I even had a tech that helped me set up all of my stereo components for my Dish remote over the phone. He gave me codes that wasn't even listed in the owners book
I have talked to people that have had both Dish and Direct that the tech support and the remote for dish was more user friendly. If you knew of a store where they have Direct or Dish connected to their T.V.s you could just shop for a T.V. and at the same time check out whatever satellite program they were using
If you don' t like the one you get after making your choice just make sure that it doesn't have a long contract in case you want to opt out and go with the other one. Either way you will be stuck with what ever you choose for awhile. I can tell you from experience you wont be disappointed with Dish. No matter what you choose it will be better than cable because their always raising the rates on cable.
Right now I am under a 18 month lease for $88.00 a month That includes 300 channels and 26 of them or H.D.and that includes all HBO-Cinemax channels 2 of The Movie Channels and 7 Encore channels plus all my local network channels just to give you an idea what you might be paying of course both of the satellite providers offer a wide rang of packages.