Question about video scalers


I recently purchased a Sony Bravia 40" lcd television and am less than thrilled at the quality of some standard definition material. Our previous CRT display, a 32" hdtv Hitachi Ultravision, actually looked better to me than the Sony and looked great on all programming, hdtv or standard. The Sony looked better than anything else in the store on hdtv, but the inhome experience lacks a bit on standard def. I'm sure a big part of it is that the larger screen magnifies source quality discrepancies. So, my question is, how well do video upscalers work and how much does one have to spend to get acceptable quality? I see everything from $300 units to $5k or more Runcos. Any tips or where to purchase and what to look for? FWIW, cable service delivered through an Atlanta Scientific Explorer 8300hd box/dvr connected via component inputs. I've got a HDMI cable on the way.
photon46
i was also very unhappy with SD material on my new HDTV, but it really isnt the TV's fault. A scaler may not be able to help much, what may help is a call to your local cable provider to request some assistance. This may mean adding a signal booster or it could mean having a technican come out and clean the local fiber node.
LCD's tend to look soft overall. Sony is one of the nicer pictures out there however. You might find some improvement with a scaler, but your display might be the final limitation. I would try avsforums.

CRT black level and phosphore speed is much better than most LCD displays so this is what you may be seeing. Ultravisions were pretty good, especially if they were set up right. Yeah, it's not flat, but the picture is better.
You could run the signal through a coumputer and TV card (I'm not sure if Hauppage PVR has ouputs back to TV) along with a shareware program called DScaler. There might be sound sync problems due to computing time, so a very fast computer is needed.