If you can see stepped banding of a graduated color, it's had the shit compressed outta it! This was a standard TV, so no HD, but it was a premium digital channel that looked worse live than VCR tape.
I don't have any experience with Comcast, but I can tell that with COX switching from analog cable to Digital cable made enormous difference in viewing and recording with a PC capture card using S-VIDEO. It is the difference between mpeg-1 quality, and Standard DVD. So I don't see why the Component HD recording wouldn't be good. But I will just have to get mine installed and see for myself.
