Originally posted by Herkalees
There are a couple of answers to your question, based on the way you asked it:
1) If you're asking about weaker than average non-HD signals, than yeah, it still won't look so good. A million dollar t.v. will still look like butt if your source signal sucks.
2) If you're question is "If the HD signal is weak in my area, will it look bad?" The answer is no. An HD t.v will either pull in full 1080i (HD) or nothing. Unlike analog, a HDTV tuner will never settle for anything less, because it's digital, the signal is either on or off. If you live in an area where the terrain is all over the place, and you get a fuzzy ANALOG channel 4, the HD version of channel 4 just won't come in at all, not even fuzz.
3) Last and most important, all HDTV's (whether they're upgradable or intergrated) have line doublers built in. In english, this means that no matter what you watch, it will look better on your HD t.v. than any non-HD t.v., whether its a VCR tape, cable, satellite, DVD or HD. The quantity of horizontal lines across the t.v. are doubled, which means they're smaller = you see more image, and less t.v. hardware.
You could possibly consider me the resident Home Theater man around this joint.