There are plenty of people that get their main entertainment and news programs from television and consequently spend inordinate amounts of time in front of their TV. Nowadays, televisions come in all sorts of flavors, to which, the state-of-the-art TV has far more capabilities than televisions of even a few years ago. However, somewhat disappointingly, some of the features that consumers believe they are paying for, they aren't really getting in all of their true glory. That is to say, it is commonplace for content providers to issue High-definition channels for you to watch, if your TV is capable of viewing them, and if you are inclined to pay the price of this upgrade. The problem with the upgrade to HD is that the viewing picture that you are seeing may or may not be truly as impressive HD picture as you might expect, and that problem does not rest with the TV that you own, but often with the content provider, itself.
The bottom line is that the data that is being sent to customer's TVs often times has to be compressed in order to free up enough bandwidth to the customer especially in regards to the final mile that reaches the consumer's TV and in order to remove any of the lag effect from the capacity of the content exceeding normal bandwidth capabilities in reaching its chosen destination, that content may be purposely compressed. This means that depending upon where you live, who your content provider is, the channel that you are watching, and the overall resolution capability of your television itself, whether the picture is HD or even of a decent picture quality on non-HD channels is to a large extent, out of your hands.
In addition to the above, there are some television shows that are shown on different television stations, depending upon the time of day, so that you will commonly find that the resolution of the show varies considerably from one station to another, even though each station is re-broadcasting the exact same show. The difference between the picture quality of the show comes down to the compression of the picture by that particular TV station itself, as the more compressed the signal, the less bandwidth, the less storage, and the less burden is placed upon the content provider's resources in general, rendering the cost of providing such content to be cheaper and easier to transmit.
The thing is, it is the height of frustration to spend the money to purchase a high-end television set, which is capable of providing an absolutely breathtaking picture, only to find out, that you will be in effect, cheated in that quality by your content provider. The fact of the matter is, by cable providers offering their customers an endless supply of channels that are available at all times of the day, they have made a purposeful decision that you will accept content of a lesser quality to enjoy a more comprehensive choice menu, indicating that once again, quantity and quality are often found to be in conflict, with the customer receiving the short end of that stick.