New to the forum, you may have forgive me! Have HLS6186W and the picture
from regular cable is awesome, better than I thought it would be! I just purchased a
Panasonic DMR-ES46VS DVD recorder and it has a HDMI output along with the standard S output. When I use either outputs the picture is grainy. I also would say that the DVD recordings made from off air are not as great as I thought they would be. Not much better than tape. Trying to decide if I have a poor recorder it works
great otherwise!

No DVD recorder is as good for PQ as a stand-alone DVD player. You might want to try component (S-video is the worst option, and HDMI might be giving you too much detail, hence grain). Also, using a calibration DVD (AVIA or DVE) to tweek your settings such as sharpness might help

I don't know your recorder but make sure it is set to output the best signal. When I set my liteon to progressive the picture improved drastically.