Looking for 622 SD advice

My wife and I recently bought a Westinghouse W4207 42" LCD monitor, upgraded our Dish service to HD and got a 622 DVR. While we love the quality of the HD channels and OTA HD, we are not at all happy with the quality of the SD picture. OTA SD was just OK, but the Dish SD channels looked pretty bad.

It did help a little once I realized I could change the DVR's output to 480i to force the TV to do the upscaing instead of the DVR; then the SD quality looks somewhat better. Now, when switching between SD and HD channels, I have to press Menu, 6, 8, left, left, down, down, right, right, select, left, select, view TV. No fun.

Here are my two questions, the first one rhetorical and the second one not:

1. Why would Dish make a DVR without seperate resolution options for HD and SD output, especially when the built-in upscaing of SD is so poor?

2. Could my TV just be particularly bad at displaying the DVR's 720p output of SD channels, or would it look this poor on any TV? I've read in reviews of the Westinghouse W4207 that its upscaler is not great. I don't think the TV is doing any upscaling when the 622 is set at 720p, but I could be wrong. We've got about another week to return the TV to Best Buy if we want, and we're willing to spend more to get a different 42" HDTV if we could get better SD quality. Does anyone have a TV that gets decent SD channel output from a VIP622 set at 720p, 1080p or 1080i?

The receiver has active outputs for s-video, composite and rf. If you hook them up, you can change the input on the tv and not have to touch the receiver.

Your tv could also not handle the other input well either. There has been several discussions on this, each tv is different.

Actually my 622 does a nice job with my RP Sony 55" displaying the SD channels. When I had Comcast I would never change the aspect ratio to widescreen on SD because it was unwatchable. With Dish I found that I perfer to watch SD this way. I have mine set to 1080i and left it there. I'm using composite cables.

Actually my 622 does a nice job with my RP Sony 55" displaying the SD channels. When I had Comcast I would never change the aspect ratio to widescreen on SD because it was unwatchable. With Dish I found that I perfer to watch SD this way. I have mine set to 1080i and left it there. I'm using composite cables.

Are you using composite (red, white, yellow which are 480i) or component (the red, green and blue) at 1080i?

What connections are you using? HDMI or component (RGB)?

I have my ViP 622 connected to a Sony 50" KDS-50A2000 via HDMI. The ViP 622's output is set to 1080i, the KDS-50A2000 deinterlaces this to 1080p. Both HD and SD look fine. I am surprised at how viewable SD is on the 50" set, but I believe the trick here is to stay at 50" rather than something bigger, and sit at a viewing distance appropriate for a 50" SD set.

Prior to the KDS-50A2000, the ViP 622 was connected to my Samsung TX-P3075WH first via component, then via an HDMI to DVI cable. Again, 1080i output from the ViP 622, and the SD looks fine (but not as good as ATSC OTA SD broadcasts).

Perhaps the scaler in the ViP 622 does a better job converting 480i to 1080i than to 720p.

Dish did not create the 622 with native passthrough because they just plain missed the mark on that one. I change my resolution between 720p/1080i/and 480i.

No I cant really see a diff between 720p and 1080i, but the 480i channels look like crap when the 622 does the work. Much better when I send the 480i to my tv.