You have hit it on the head. I was also very dissapointed to find that "All" the ATSC DVD recorders do not pass HD directly to your HD tv.
I even wrote LG several times trying to confirm that it did or didn't . The LG rep told me that it would pass HD on HDMI only and upconverted on Component.
But people who have bought the LG say it does upconvert on Component and HDMI.
Allmost every company has some glaring manufactureing error. The latest I learned about was with the Panasonics. I am told that if your digital signal breaksup the DVD stops recording. Here is the quite from avsforum site:
"I noticed the recording would stop and the recorder would actually turn itself off. A few seconds later, the recorder would turn itself back on and resume recording. This off/on sequence left a lot longer gap in my recording than it would have if the recorder had just kept recording through the temporary signal loss (I'm subject to some minor multipath signal loss in my location when it's windy or rainy). I subsequently verified what was happening by pulling off the antenna connection during a recording."
