That reminds me of a little box I have that was for reversing video and inserting syncs..... ie it would give you video on VCII channels. I'd use it on NFL sunday ticket (when they were on C-band), and I'd get audio off an internet radio feed (the audio was generally 2 plays behind the video).
But anyway, the sync insertion was critical to the color of the video, and I'd usually end up with blue grass, and players with green faces, and the yellow terrible towels were some disgusting color. It was kind of like watching some Star Trek futuristic NFL game with all the wierd colors.
Relative to analog quality, that could vary a lot too. The number of horizontal lines was pretty much fixed by the standard, but I think you could get more or less resolution along that horizontal line, depending upon the bandwidth used. Some analog feeds used relatively narrow bandwidth, such as to fit in half of a Ku transponder, etc, while other feeds used pretty much the whole transponder. That's why the higher end receivers had variable video bandwidth, so as to match the bandwidth of the signal.
The analog sat feeds were certainly capable of excellent video, but only if the receiver was capable of matching the bandwidth. I alway found it a constant fight trying to choose the proper audio/video parameters to give you quality video/audio. Despite compression, DVB is much more automatic. Except for the occasional low level dialog in AC3 audio, you dont have to fiddle with anything to get things near perfect.
One thing though... back with analog, the sat feeds were generally MUCH better (after fiddling) than the OTA broadcasts, I'm assuming because there was much higer resolution across the horizontal lines. However with the advent of digital, now, unless you go to one of those high bitrate network feeds, generally what you get OTA is superior to most of the stuff on satellite, such as the Dishnet/DTV stuff. Although, I guess the OTA quality depends upon how many other channels they try to squeeze into the signal. I'm lucky that they only put one HD, and one low speed SD on the channels around here, so the main HD signal is pretty good quality.
