Voomers--give cable serious consideration
I'm feeling a tad better about the whole situation after picking up an 8300HD receiver and hooking up Cox cable in Fairfax, VA. I had never had digital cable before, I switched to Voom some 15 months ago from DishNetwork. At that time I believed the Dish SD channels to be slightly better than Voom's, but still not that great on a 60" Grand Wega. The PQ on Cox cable is definitely superior on all the SD digital channels to varying degrees and comparable on the few HDs. There wasn't even a need to cross check, the difference is significant.
A few things to note: 1. The "lower" channels categorized as Basic and Expanded are still coming in as analog. I was surprised about this, I was expecting all channels to be digital. Some come in about same as/better than satellite SD, some not. I am getting a tech in to see if they can be improved. Seems like the crappy shopping channels have the best analog picture. 2. The "Digital Tiers," as I mentioned, have better picture than the VOOM and Dish SD, no doubt about it. There is great variability in PQ as you can through the channels, analog to HD. 3. Cox is running a deal on the premiums ($5/mo for 3 mos) so I got HBO, the picture quality on the HBO SD is even better than the digital, somewhere in between the SD digitial and the HD in quality. 4. The local channels are coming in as HD, but there was quite a bit of breakup going on, it seems to be impacted by the weather. 5. No OTA capability on any of the Cox receivers. The SD box has a DVI connection, the 8300HD box I got does not, it has component (I am using) and HDMI (not available on my WE610).
Conclusion: On a larger screen, cable may very well give you a nicer picture, I am glad I didn't go through the trouble of re-hooking Dish. Your results may be different on a smaller screen. It is going to take a whole mess of commercial free HD on the satellite networks to pry me from cable. Who would have thought?