All of Dish Network's regular satellites are in the same location so their dish is only available in the round variety.

Nope. I have the Dish 500 elliptical dish that picks up satelites at 110 and 119. The non main ones are at 61.5 and 148, and those carry many international stations, plus provide coverage for Alaska, Hawaii, and other remote places. Most of the locals are carried on one of the two main, along with some HDTV I believe.

I have a DirecTiVo on a 46" rear projection HDTV and it doesn't suck, but it's not that good. You see digital artifacts nearly all the time.

Yet another benefit of the merger is that they plan on addressing this by not compressing everthing as much, since there will be 14 total satelites under the new company. Right now, each side has 6, with Echostar launching 2 more soon.