I am still searching for a perfect progress bar for DD, I know a dirty trick[*1] – put DD to background an sending “USR1” signal to bring it to show a progress – I hate this solution!

This one is not so dirty, but you have only the done progress and transfer speed.

1
2

dd if=/opt/wap/Backup.tib | pv | ssh -c arcfour id@tower "dd of=/home/id/Backup.tib"
1.94GB 0:01:15 [30.1MB/s] [<=>

Dirty trick:
Only local way!

1
2

dd if=/opt/wap/Backup.tib of=file.img bs=4KB& pid=$!
while true; do kill -USR1 $pid && sleep 1 && clear; done