I live in Puerto Rico where satellite images and digital cable is just starting to blossom. Right now there are two companies battling it out down here. The local cable company and DirecTV. We used to have AlphaStar but it went belly up, and the companies that offer the huge satellite dishes are mostly bought in the rural areas. My question is this. I have local cable and it looks terrible. I have seen DirecTV shown on the Sony Wegas and it isn't impressive either but at least has no video noise or hanging dots or dot crawl. IMHO Wegas don't justify the price since the Panasonic SuperFlats or Toshiba Cinema Series TV's look as good or better when using a pure digital source like DVD.
Will watching DirecTV on my RPTV make the image worse than it looks on the Sony Wega's therefore making the upgrade from cable to digital satellite a moot point?

Those Wega's probably wern't calibrated right. They typically have sharpness and brightness turned WAY too high. However, remember the larger you make a picture the worse quality will look up close.

Daniel's familiar with the WEGAs I can see.

The factory defaults are terrible. I mean - defaults usually are on most sets, but my WEGA was way off. This is probably old hat to everyone, but if you don't have it, invest $30 (or whatever is is) in the Video Essentials DVD (available at Amazon.com). Wonderful tool will walk you through calibration of everything from your sound system to all the variables of your picture. I have the older Sony 36FV1 and fresh out of the box I was so disappointed with the picture I nearly returned it. About 30 minutes of tweaking with the Video Essentials later and it continues to put out a terrific picture.

In fact the *only* knock on the WEGAs that I have is the weight. Don't expect the girlfriend/fiance/wife to be of much help unless she's a powerlifter. =)

I had a horrific time getting my 32" Wega down a flight of stairs. There's nothing to grip on that thing!

I had mine professionally calibrated and the image is *wonderful*.