Picture quality is not great on my hd ready lcd tv

High definition ready is different to Full High defintion for the simple reason the software is different to prove play a HD play station game on both and you will immediately see the difference in picture quality however the difference is not so significant on your normal satellite HD channels depending on the resolution the TV can produce

Sounds like the main signal board went poof

only on the hd channels

Yes you will get a better picture quality out of a cable box if you get an HD cable box.
The reason you are getting the diminished picture is due to the signal you are feeding the TV is an analog signal. The newer HD TV's are made for digital TV and this older technology shows all its flaws on this type of TV.

When you get the new box understand that the same channels you are getting plugged directly into the tv are still going to have some grainy look to them but the good thing is that a lot of them are starting to be rebroadcast on HD channels and that is where your new toy will truly shine.

Enjoy your new TV...

Good Luck...

Try swapping some cables around, like the skart lead from the dvd(if scart) for the cable one, if the picture problem swaps with the lead then thats the problem. If it doesn't try settings on the cable and tv, if the cable is sending nvbs signals and the tv is set to pal then this can also occur.

LCD TV refers to the substance that creates the picture quality (it would be either LCD or Plasma or Tube) and HD refers to a crisp clear picture that can be attained. So your TV is an LCD (Liquid Crystal Display) TV that is capable of receiving and displaying HD (High Definition) Picture.

What you need to check for is whether the TV has a built-in Tuner. This will either be SD (standard definition) TV Tuner or an HD TV Tuner. The box it came in will tell you or you may still have stickers on your TV.

If it has a built-in SD tuner you will be able to pick up HD channels but in a lower quality. In this case you will only need to plug the TV into a Wall-socket antenna or rabbit-ear antenna.

If it has a built-in HD Tuner you will be able to pick up HD Channels in full HD quaility picture. Simply by plugging the TV into a Wall-socket antenna or rabbit-ear antenna.

If your TV does NOT have a built-in TV-Tuner then this TV is clasified as "HD Ready". Which means that you have to purchase a Set Top Box (STB). you can get either HD or SD set top boxes. In this instance you will plug the cable from the wall socket into the STB then from the STB into the TV using either an HDMI cable (as long as your TV has an HDMI input) or through RCA cables which will be coloured Green, Blue and Red (i think red)

By the Way - best picture quality is from a wall-socket antenna.
HDMI = High Definition Multimedia Interface
STB = Set Top Box
High Definiton RCA cables will also be refered to as YPbPr/YCbCr (depending on equipment)
LCD = Liquid Crystal Display (the method used to make the picture on your TV screen)

If you have anymore questions, ask away.

Get a HDMI lead it makes HD tv look how it is suppose to look HIGH DEFINITION. You'd think it naturally is suppose to look great but these people are rip offs you need that additional peice which should make it spot on for you. Try stores such as maplin & currys. Get the gold plated HDMI lead better quality

Good luck

check your scart to see if any pins are bent or even a slight bit of dirt will affect the quality of your picture

Hi - I have some suggestions. The following factors effect picture quality:
1. Source (because LCD TVs have much higher picture quality than traditional CRT "Tube" TVs, the worse your source material, the worse it looks on a LCD TV).
DVD and Sky/Digital TV should look excellent on this TV when connected with a good quality Scart lead (nothing too expensive, but a Oxygen Free Copper Gold lead may help) directly into one of the TV's Scart inputs (avoid using "switching" boxes for multiple equipment).
Also, bear in mind that this is a HUGE screen (40 inches I think) and will REALLY show up bad source material.
The best advice I can give is, if you have HD-ready equipment use HDMI connections for everything (ideally with an HD-uplscaling DVD player which will "improve" the quality of standard DVDs on the TV - I recommend models by Philips) and check that you are in "Movie" or "Cinema" mode on the TV.
Make sure that all of your equipment, like your Sky digibox, is set to 16:9 mode (not 4:3) aswell to preserve the true widescreen aspect ratio.
Hope that helps!

The set may not be at fault. If you are on cable some channels are still in anolog and some are digital. if you are on a nolog channel the picture will look preaty bad compared to the digital ones.