picture quality help

[hjai]

for my dishnetwork 522, is there any way to improve the picture quality? i am seeing a lot of blockiness on my 32" flatscreen. i've tried the s-video and composite connections and both are the same.

 

[hjai]

figured (?) out the source of the problem

so , i tried all different combos of connections on the 32" tv(between the 522's svideo, composite, and coax outputs and the tv's coax, composite, and svideo inputs and also the path from the 522's coax to vcr coax to tv's composite and coax inputs. basically every combo I could try.
looks like the coax o/p from the 522, though fuzzier, had no blockiness. both the composite and svideo outputs did have blockiness. In addition, the composite from the 2nd video's output is blocky while the 2nd video's coax output is fuzzy but not blocky.
Is this typical of 522's?
they're sending out another 522 for me to try, hopefully it works.
unfortunately i have some shows saved on the dvr that i want to keep and they said I can't transfer them. any way to save them besides transferring to vhs (i don't have a dvd burner)?

 

[GunnerJoe]

Sounds like your TV has a nice sharp picture. The blockiness is caused by the MPEG compression. Many TVs, especially older models are inherently slightly blurred and those hard edges aren't that noticeable. The high-def and digital TV's have much sharper pictures. The same goes for the video connection - the poorest quality connection you use will show less of the MPEG artifacting, at the cost of a slightly more blurry picture.