My recent Comcast experience

A quick background, for the last 2.5 years I have been using a cheap Dell media center PC as my DVR system. It has worked great in the past and i really like the interface. However, this summer i bought a new 52″ HDTV and got HD service from Comcast. As one might expect the output from the Media Center PC to the new TV was very poor over s-video or VGA so upgraded the video card and now over HDMI the monitor looks crystal clear, as it should. That said the Comcast picture quality (SD) is pretty poor in my area(a lot of washed out channels). I’ve experienced this in all the buildings I’ve lived in the DC area for the last few years (so it wasn’t anything new). With OK SD input into my Media Center PC (yes, Microsoft also degrades the picture quality) the TV output even on HDMI was pretty poor on a big screen. Not the mention the age of the Media Center PC (its starting to go) and the fact I’ve been paying for HD service and use it infrequently (as it requires changing over to a different box) I decided to buy a TiVo HD.