Hi Everyone and many thanks for taking time to reply.
My fault, I should have said my Humax is the non-HDMI 9150 model - at the time bought it for my 32" CRT so HDMI wasn't so important - if only I had got the 9300! I am using a Thor scart which What HiFi gave good write-ups to.
Realised how daft I sounded saying the picture is grainy within a couple of metres! I am not sitting and viewing within a couple of metres but am definitely now sitting much further away from the set than before. I am now viewing usually at about 3.5m - 4m.
Agree with the comment about viewing distance guides....The Awards issue has a diagram on page 40 on 'How to Buy A Television' which states if you are 1.8m to the TV, "buy a 46in screen". My closest armchair sits you at 1.8m but that will become the least used seat now probably! Yes this is no doubt for HD viewing and I didn't expect perfection but didn't expect Freeview SD to be so poor at 1.8m initially.
I say 'initially' above as having spent time tweaking a lot of the settings on the Sony, the picture is much, much improved - so far as to say I have watched a couple of films now in Freeview SD which look DVD-like at around 3m. And that is played on the Humax via scart as well. Sony's in-built Freeview SD is better still but mostly the family likes the PVR functions and its ease of use so we generally continue to watch through this.
Haven't seen HD on it yet, although have bought the Readers' Award Sony Blu-ray player and a QED reference cable. Haven't got Freeview HD in my area yet but will surely upgrade to a HD PVR with HDMI when it comes.
So now much happier and will check the 'How To...' video guides as well for further improvements, thanks for the suggestion.
Just a couple of questions I don't know the answer to..
1. With DSO, will the quality of Freeview pictures increase? I know signal strength will be boosted multiple times but will we see significant picture improvements? Some Freeview channels at the moment seem better than others.
2. I have a good quality aerial and cable going to a distributer/amplifier in the loft. From there it is cheap brown coax cable through the walls to my living room TV. Is there significant benefit in replacing the wall-hidden stuff with e.g. 'satellite-quality' black cable?
Thanks again