I have regular cable in my bedroom. Think it's still considered digital, but I dont have a built-in DVR in the cable box. (I have a Tivo in there. Love the Tivo because it burns dvds for me) The other cable boxes are all DVRs, and they get HD on them. My box doesnt.

The crappy signal is on all of our cable boxes. So, it's not our boxes that's the problem. I'm fairly sure that the problem is between the box at the end of my yard and wherever the cable company sends the signal from to us.

If my Tivo dies (expecting that to happen soon, it's about 6yrs old) I'll probably get a DVR box from the cable company. (probably move one from another room, instead of going to get a new one from the cable company) or I'll go buy another Tivo that has dual tuner and HD capability.

I like the Tivo because I can record my shows onto DVD, or I can transfer them wirelessly from the Tivo to my Windows computer. If I'd bother to buy the program for it, I could use my computer to burn the dvd's. I can also put Tivo-ed shows onto a pin drive and just plug the pin drive into another Windows computer to watch the show. (for some reason, this doesnt work with my iMac, so I guess Tivo is exclusively a Windows recording...altho the dvd's I burn on the Tivo will play on my iMac)

Plus the Tivo holds more tv shows than the cable DVR does. I did see our cable company will soon have a fancypants DVR box that you can access from any cable box and it holds up to 500gb of tv shows. I'd get that if my Tivo crashes.