I live in the DC area and I get a lot of over-the-air programming in "dolby surround" (as they advertise it). Most major sports events that I have watched over the past year have been in surround, particularly football games. Some shows have actually decent 5.1 sound, like Desperate Housewives, Grace Anatomy, House, etc. Some networks broadcast commercials and portions of a show (i.e. an HD baseball game gets a report from another game in progress) at different formats, so you may go back and forth between 2.0 and 5.1 during the same program. Fox is one of the few stations that tries to keep even the commercials at the same format - I believe all the superbowl commercials were wide screen and Dolby Digital.

I have been dissapointed with DirecTV's HD package. To me, TNTHD looks at the wrong aspect ratio and grainy all the time, ESPNHD has very little HD programming. The only bright spots are Universal HD, Discovery HD, and HDNET but the programming is awful for the most part, or repeated over and over. I have to admit that seeing "2001 Space Odyssey" on UHD at 1080i was awsome, but only about the first 10 times that week. Discovery HD has a lot of demo-quality HD nature programming, but I get a lot of similar programming over one of the 4 (yes, 4) HD PBS channels that I get over the air at 1080i or 720p for free. I have to be fair and admit that I have not seen anything look better on my display than DiscoveryHD and HDNET, but when one of the daily programs is literally watching the sun rise ("Sun Rise Earth") and that show gets repeated 3 times that day, you have to wonder.

I guess if you are a Dallas Mavericks fan, you should get DirecTV's HD package to get HDNET (owned by Mark Cuban) - all of the MAVs games are broadcast at 1080i and DD 5.1.