I have a 10 foot dish with an mpeg receiver slaved to a 4DTV receiver. I get a couple thousand channels (most of it free) and pay around $100/
year for the basic subscription channels I want, ala carte. I rotate a Showtime package with an HBO package depending on when Bill Maher and Queer as Folk is in season. You get 20 or so movie channel feeds for around $50 for 3 months. There is no such thing as rain fade with the big dish
For internet I use DSL. My sister next door has the local cable internet service and quite frankly it sucks royally compared to the local DSL service.