Re Sd Channnels
I'm also a new voomer and not to happy about the SD picture quality. I left D* after 10 years because the SD quality went down hill over the years. From the Voom web site which helped me make the switch.
"VOOM is built to harness the most advanced methods of signal transmission, bringing you the highest quality HD and SD images in the industry .Other providers overcompress their programming, squashing channels into their signal with yesterday's technology. The result? Lower quality images.
VOOM uses the newest generation of satellite technology, the Rainbow-1 DBS satellite. It provides more channels and better-looking channels than our competition. With other providers, there's a good chance you're hooked up to an old, outdated system from the Cold War era. Not exactly the future of TV transmission."
I'm sure not seeing in the SD picture they're hyping above. Some channels are worse than D*, a few are slighty better but most are about the same, which to me is poor. The HD stuff is outstanding though. I've hooked every output on the STB to my Sony's various analog inputs (rf, composite, S and even componet) running 480i ( the STB should only output 480i on it's analog outputs anyway) Even using my outside antenna into the tv antenna input gives me just about a DVD quality picture for the OTA analog signals. Sorry if I,m being a little long winded here but I guess a expected a better picture on the SD stuff after reading the web site hype, but getting only D* quality. Otherwise my install went well. I get all the Detroit and Toledo stations on the STB using my existing antenna, so the installer was happy about that. No program info from the Toledo stations though. Thanks for letting me vent a little.