Does Dish have a Media Center tuner on deck too?

All this information about DirecTV's Media Center tuner has gotten us excited about Vista Media Center again. The last time we were this excited about MS's DVR platform is when we learned about the ATI CableCARD tuner -- that excitement was quickly dashed when the reality of obtaining one set in. But this new tuner offers us the same promise, but only enables one additional provider -- or so we thought. It seems that a commenter our friend Chris Lanier blogs and that he seems to put some merit in, claims that beta program letters have gone out to some Dish subscribers as well. Chris also points out that most of the technology like DVB-S and h.264 are already there, and that the main missing component -- a big one -- is Dish's conditional access system. Of course we always knew that collaboration between big companies like this is almost never limited by technology.