Awful cable picture quality on HDTV

[XRTRazor]

Hi, gonna start off by saying I'm a total newb when it comes to TVs in general(heck haven't even owned one in the past several years and just stream anything I watch on my pc).

My parents recently purchased their first HDTV, a Sceptre 32" X322BV-HD and the picture quality is pretty good when watching DVDs and such but the quality when connected to cable is quite frankly appalling it's so blurry/pixlated. I'm not sure whether their cable company offers HD programming since it's a fairly small municipal run company, but even if they don't I would have thought SD would still look as good on a HDTV as it does on a similar sized crt.

Since they outsource all their tech support to generally incompetent individuals before I try dealing with them I'd like a general idea what I should know/ask if I end up being able to chat with a supervisor with a clue. Atm the tv is connected directly to the coax that comes into the house, no set top cable box or anything. Would something like that matter? Or is the something else that could be done to improve the quality? Any help would be greatly appreciated.

 

[alyoshka]

As a matter of fact, yes, a set top box will help the quality a little. You need to find the right set top box to be able to upscale the video to a little less or close to HD quality.
I know of very few set top boxes that do such a thing, but, they do exist. This is something that you need to work out with the Cable people, if you're not using a set top box and still are being able to watch the telly , it basically means that the television network, or, cable network down your side has not yet been fully digitized meaning the still have the analogue signals on. Which actually will have this problem with HDTVs....
Check for the specs at the Cable customer care, ask them what it would cost to get a set top box which they provide and what other services do they provide with the box.

 

[americanaudiophile]

Since the TV does have a clear QAM tuner built in you should have run the channel scan in the set up menu so the TV can find any digital cable channels that may be there.
One of the ways that cheaper HDTV manufacturers save money is by using low quality video processing in the TV. As aluoshka says a cable box will probably have a better scaler and should have HDMI output even if the signal is standard definition.