The quality that you get depends mostly on the transmission bitrate that they use, and how much compression, etc. I've been using Media Centre since it was first introduced, using several different tuner cards over that period, and I can honestly say that I've never noticed any difference between the quality of the cards themselves. But the quality of the TV picture varies enormously, at least over here. Some of the BBC wildlife documentaries are simply awesome, but for the most part, I'd agree that the quality is pretty poor