Digital vs Anolog recording Quality

[davefred99]

I have been doing some comparisons from both digital (Direct Tv) and analog (Cable) sources and am suprised by my findings. In my opinion I get a better recording from my cable input using the PVR-250 tuner than I get using and Svideo input from my sony direct tv box. I have both because when I installed cable DSL it only costs me $10.00 more for basic analog cable and I use Direct Tv because it has more of the specialty channels.
The weird thing is that Direct Tv generaly looks better on my Tv's when cmpared to the Cable but when recording its the other way around. Infact the Cable input looks better in Btv Live Tv mode.
The difference is subtle and at first you might not notice it but if you look at the finer picture details like a close up of a persons face you can see more detail from the cable source.
It is my guess that since Direct Tv is already digital there is some loss in reprocessing mpegg2 again in BTV where as the cable is an anolog feed, although most every cable company uses digital to analog processing albeit with broadcast quality equipment.
I am fortunate to have very very good cable quality so others might not see things the same. Even on my system there are some channels that are better than others. Direct Tv on the other hand is very consistent on all channels. I will still use Direct Tv for most of my recording until multi-Tuner is available. Its a shame that you can not have more than one program guide available at least as far as I can tell. You can have multiple inputs but the guide is tied to one or the other but not both. To change guides you must go to the admin mode and update your snapsteam net account and due a fresh update. It takes way to long for my purposes. I can manualy set up a recording on either source.
Anyway I thought some of you might find this interesting. I am curious as to what others have to say about this topic.
Dave.