HDTV Local Stations

[Ace H]

Until I get a chance to pick up a HD Cable Box, I'm running analog cable from the wall directly into a New Sony HDTV. Via the QAM tuner, I'm able to get my local HD stations. Since I don't have the HD Box and HDMI or Component hookup yet, but the station info indicates 1080i & 720p depending on the station, am I still getting quality HD video? Should I expect to see an improvement when I'm hooked up via HDMI and the HD Cable Box?

[pixelthis]

You're cable company is obviously not scrambling the local channels, how nice of them.
The picture over your box probably will be comparable, just make sure its set up right.
ALSO you will get a lot more channels.

[Woochifer]

A lot of variables in the picture quality, but generally the DTV portion of an analog cable feed should be quite good. On my system, I found the DTV channels via cable just as good as what I saw using an OTA antenna (which actually gives you the most bandwidth if you have good OTA reception). The picture quality is also slightly better than what I pick up on my Directv HD receiver for those channels.

How this compares with a digital cable box will depend on how the quality of the video processing in that tuner compares with the tuner in your TV. It also depends on how your cable company assigns/reassigns the DTV channels. In order to conserve bandwidth, cable companies compress the signals on their digital spectrum. Not sure if this applies to the DTV signals that get fed into the analog service.