Actually, I was soliciting only opinion.
OK then, opinions I got plenty of today. Half off and all.
When I got the 622, my first impression was that it was softer on SD material than the 508 it replaced. However, I never had it set up to do side by side comparisons. The 508 is currently hooked up to a 32" Sony, while the 622 is on a 56" Toshiba DLP projector. That really isn't fair as a smaller set will always look sharper with the same material. I would say that normal SD material was not up to DVD quality, or even close on the 622.
However, SD material when displayed on an HD channel is noticably sharper than on the equivalent SD channel. This holds true for broadcast channels and for the HD channels that simulcast. I believe that when an HD channel shows SD material, not stretched or chopped, the picture is at or near DVD quality.
The stuff they pass off as HD varies a lot in quality and it isn't just the specific channel. There is stuff that really does look like upconverted NTSC, soft focus film transfers, heavily compressed HD and not so heavily compressed stuff. It looks to me that the uplink engineers are constantly making value judgements on which channels can get a little bit of extra bandwidth.