Welcome to the lovely world of analog channels on an HDTV. They are probably not going to look any better coming through the HDTV receiver than they look now. The problem is that all of the abilities of the HDTV just expose all of the shortcomings of an analog signal. You didn't mention the size of your new tv, but when you take a poor quality picture and blow it up on a bigger screen, it just gets worse. And when you take a standard aspect picture and stretch it to fit your widescreen HDTV, it gets distorted.
Of course, once you have your hi-def cable, you may find yourself watching a lot less of the analog channels. Thats been my solution. The digital channels are very watchable if you have the digital package or any premium channels, but the HD channels blow it all away.
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