Well first of all, by years end, Dish Networks should have an HDTV PVR box out according to their last tech chat. Biggest hurdle right now is drive size, but by the end of the year, the space needed should be pretty cheep.

Is the elliptical dish for DirecTV the same hardware as the one used for Dish? Could I switch later?

I'm not sure how compatible it all is. One thing though, watch the merger carefully. If it goes through (Dish and DirecTv) customers on both sides won't have to pay any "upgrade" prices if the equipment changes. I am sure that Dish will standardize on their equipment, as it follows closer to what is used in many other places.

Does the DishPVR suck? Dish would cost a good bit less money than DirecTV, but you get this box that's destined to be orphaned in favor of the future Moxi box.

Yes and no. It offers no Tivo like show picking (though I have never seen this feature in action), and search is still in the pipeline (should be implemented by spring, via a T9 input like the empeg). And show recording could use some improvement compaired to what I have on the DishPlayer (the bastard child of the MS + Echostar arrangement that has since been abandoned by MS to work on UltimateTV). My upgrade plan right now is to wait on the Moxi player to replace my DishPlayer. But if I had to choose right now, I'd probably go with the DirecTiVo box, since it offers dual tuners (Dish has a box on the way soon, but it's not out now).

For HDTV, it should definitly improve if the merger occurs, since they will have tons of satelite bandwith to play with.