my .02 about cable cards....they do not work! at least in my area Richmond, VA. Comcast has had about an 85% faliure rate for every one I have tried to have installed. IF you do get one, and it actually works, you end up losing all of the menu options that come with the cable box, such as channel info, guide info, and unless you have a built in PVR into the video display device you will have to add one, if you want it, most cable company boxes have a PVR option. SOOOOOO even though you MAY gain some image quality (depending on the quality of the tuner) by going to a cable card for your lower channels, it still makes no difference as far as the HD channels. minus the fact that most boxes have a DVI output that as far as quality goes is shady at best (lots of artifacts) so you end up using the component video...not too much of a big deal, at least you don't end up with artifacts...