I had a service problem with direct tv and have decided to cancel the service in favor of cable service. Now I am worried that the picture from cable may not be up to par with direct tv. Anyone have any idea with that. I would appreciate any input. I am of course talking about HDTV.

Earlier this year I dropped DTV in favor of Cablevision io, I was having trouble with signal drop out that was not fixed after a service call, plus I needed to install another dish to get HDtv...switching was the best move I ever made, got all the HDtv channels for no additional charge and noticed an improved video signal, better color saturation and no drop outs. Plus saved money too.

Satellite companies offer better picture quality with SDTV and EDTV, but cable companies offer a better HDTV quality. I am quoting from the HD Mod from this forum.

I also prefer cable over dtv and dish have had all three.

Hope this is not to far off topic of Cable vs Sat.
I just purchased a Sony 40V2500 and have it connected to HD - DVR Medicom cable settop box via HDMI. So far, HD pq is pretty good. But, SD pq is very poor. There seems to be a lot of ghosting. I had the cable man out today and he said that the signal is good. He can not improve. Is DirecTV likly to be better? I don't think it is TV setup because once in a while the picture is pretty good. And it is always good on HD channels.
Thanks. Dave

Naw, that's pretty normal for all the providers that some SD channels look better than others. Depends on the content being shown, too.

I seriously doubt if D* or E*'s SD is gonna look better in general. Probably worse. And their HD's not gonna look better either, so you're probably better off sticking with cable.

Maybe try the component connections and see if the SD's any better.

From what I hear, the local channels of E* and D* are extremely poor since they have to demod / remod/ compress the channels for satellite. In other words, there's a 2nd hop in the system which really does a number to the picture quality.

The cable companies take it direct OTA then put it out over the cable (with processing / compression).

I had Direct, and switched to Time Warner cable a few months ago.
Glad I did. Picture quality is noticably better, and I also get local channels in HD.
The only channel that's still lousy is Sci-Fi, which seems to be lousy on all providers (though it's a bit better with cable vs. Direct).

The cable companies take it direct OTA then put it out over the cable

Not really, cable companies have to receive the 8VSB OTA signal demodulate it and remodulate it to QAM for cable distribution.

That gives them plenty of time to screw it up. ;)

Nothing is better than HD received OTA on a properly setup system.

I seriously doubt if D* or E*'s SD is gonna look better in general. Probably worse. And their HD's not gonna look better either, so you're probably better off sticking with cable.

Well most of the normal SD channels here on TWC are analog and can look pretty crappy at times.

Thanks for all the input.
I realize that I have to live with the soft image edges when upscaled so much. And now it looks like I have to live with Ghosts.
However, one other thought -
Do you think if I purchased a very good scaler or video processer that would be placed between the Cable Box and the TV that it would reduce ghosting? It certainly would have more control and probably better upscaling to 1080 then the Sony Set has. If so, any suggestions? Maybe Crystalio or Lumagen? They must have some settings to reduce ghosting? But, I am not familiar with these devices.
Thanks again, Dave

I would suggest seeing whether there is a thread for your local group under Local HDTV Info and Reception.

You should be able to find users there who use both DirecTV and cable in your local area.

Since the output from many cable companies varies by area, I would not take it as a fact that you will get a better picture with cable.

However, I fully agree that you should get the best picture of the major networks via OTA.

Thanks Bruce,
OTA is not an option. I have talked to several neighbors and because of the mountains, OTA is not very good.
Thanks again, Dave