We got it largely because my wife has a jones for the Sopranos.
Signal quality is usually as good as cable. Heavy rain or snow will interfere with the signal. Light rain or cloud cover has no noticible effect.

They pretty much give you the equipment and installation as a loss leader to sell the programming. Once your year contract is up the prices jump noticably.

Also, with cable, the cable company owns the box; if something breaks, they fix it. With the dish, you own the equipment; if it breaks, you are responsible for fixing it and the bills for the programming keep on coming. I haven't had any problems with my equipment. I just checked on that when we were signing up for the service.

I like it because the cable company in my neighborhood is Adelphia and I absolutely will not deal with them. I watch a cable movie occasionally, which is 95% of my TV viewing, but there is still hundreds of channels and nothing on most of the time, just like cable.

my .02
Hugh