As mentioned, use the component out only for H/DTV channels on your cable system. Also, I've found with my SA2000HD, that it's best to use S-video only for digital channels and composite (or RF) for analog channels (under 100 here). Reason: the 2000HD's cheap filter for S-video does a poor job of splitting analog into S-video color/B&W components. Recently I outlined a sequence on how I'd convert my 2000HD to RGBHV from only 3-wire component (see
here ).
Despite the digital channel compression TWC uses here (~10:1) most digital channels are okay. In recent months I've seen more MPEG-2 artifacts (small digital 'blocks' occurring with camera pans or character movement, plus blurring, especially with detail-rich scenes) on channels such as Sundance and The Golf Channel. IFC is often bad, too. Could be the programming source or it might be both the programmer and TWC, since TWC must collect ~10 channels and multiplex them into one 6-MHz slot, typically with Cisco video routers. Can't recall seeing many MPEG-2 artifacts with Time Warner's own sources such as the numerous HBO and Cinemax channels; there's some motion blurring on Dennis Miller's weekday 11 pm (ET) shows. Of course each local TWC system and even different head ends within a system can vary in quality.
Such
cable-video routers , I've read, 'share' bandwidth between ~10 SDTV sources/6-MHz channel (or HDTV/SDTV mixes), so you'd think rapid movement and details in several MPEG-2-compressed channels sharing a 6-MHz slot would diminish the bandwidth available for other channels sharing the slot at those times. Anyway, you're certainly right about cable, especially if it's a hybrid fiber/coax system, having very large channel capacity. But NYC's TWC could boost channel capacity enormously by compressing more of its analog channels, which occupy about 600 MHz of its 750+ MHz bandwidth. Better yet, extending fiber optics to homes instead of local nodes (~500 subscribers) and eliminating bandwidth-restricted coxial-cable amplifiers would provide virtually unlimited bandwidth.
Some cable companies, though, are notorious for over-compressing digital cable, which leads to artifacts, noise, and reduced video resolution. Haven't used a satellite system, but curiously you see sharply contrasting opinions about the quality of video from the main DBS sources.
By the way, although D-ILA systems are excellent for 1080i HDTV because of their special progressive/interlace method of displaying all the HDTV pixels/frame despite the limited matrix of display elements, much earlier posts by D-ILA experts have pointed out that D-ILA projectors don't handle SDTV well at all. -- John