I deliberately switched to C-band because I got sick and tired of the excessive amounts of data compression that was being done to the DirecTV signal. They are putting too many channels onto the transponders, far more than they were originally designed to hold. DirecTV used to look great when it first came out. Then the picture got steadily worse as they added more channels, and eventually it passed my tolerance threshold.

I have a big-screen hi-def television television, too, so that adds to the problem. The DirecTV compression artifacts are simply magnified on that television.

With C-band, I get a significant number of channels as pure analog original feeds, so there are no data compression artifacts. There are some digital channels on the 4DTV box, but I do not watch them very often. I do watch hi-def HBO and Showtime in digital form, but those have much less data compression and are higher resolution, so you only see the artifacts once in a blue moon.

I will agree that the DirecTV user interface is faster and more convenient, the equipment is easier to install and maintain, and the advantage of being able to use a PVR with DirecTV is quite good. But man, what a crappy looking picture.