Rob wrote a very good post about this so I won't repeat the whole thing, you should read his.
People who know me know I'm kind of a total tv junkie so it took quite a bit for us to get to this point but I'm hoping it will be an overall improvement. For starters, it will save us money. Secondly, as Rob says, it makes us no longer tools of Comcast and DirecTV. Thirdly, I hope it means we'll only seek out things we actually want to watch and therefore watch less junk and fill our time with better things.
Anyway, a big customer service fail to DirecTV.