Do you have a spot on your property with a good south/southwest view (assuming you're continental USA)?
Lots of companies are getting rich lying how the big dish is dying but your cable company and satellite company get their signals from a big dish. These days you have to have a couple of receivers slaved together (Google 4DTV and FTA) to get the most out of a big dish but not only can you get 99% of the popular channels (a few have exclusive distribution contracts) you can get several thousand other frequencies of feeds, stations, radio, whatever and if you want HD you can add that.
You'll spend more upfront for equipment but save in subscriptions and get a better picture than your cable or DSS can provide. You will never watch 80% or more of the stuff on any cable or little dish package but on big dish you can subscribe to most channels ala carte for as little as 5 bucks a year and display first generation signals on your dream theater system. I am currently paying just $50 or so ANNUALLY for the stuff I want that is scrambled. If you only use it to watch the free stuff it it's not a replacement for whatever you use for your primary TV but if you like sports, news, international stuff and misc stuff being beamed around you will be in heaven when there is nothing else on
Caveat Emptor: there is a bit of a learning curve involved, not quite as bad as learing a computer