Better picture from Cable Box or TV Tuner? (1 Viewer)

[Chris Rock]

I have a Sony Wega 36XBR450. The picture is great. I have the video signal from my Scientific Atlanta digital cable box sent to my TV thru my Kenwood VR407 receiver, via S-Video.
To get PIP to work, I used a splitter to send the signal straight to my TV, using the coaxial input in the back of the TV.
When comparing the channel I've tuned through my cable box which runs through the receiver via S-Video with the channel I've used the TV's tuner to tune, I noticed that the channel that the TV tuned in has a better picture.
That has me wondering...should I not use the digital cable box's S-Video out? Should I send the Digital Cable Box's output to the TV via the standard coaxial cable? I was under the impression (and have had experience) that a signal passed through S-Video is better than that passed through standard coaxial cable. If I send the digital cable programming through the box for decoding, then through to my TV via standard coax cable, then the TV's tuner isn't involved at all, is it?
Anyone noticed this in their setups? Is my problem that I've used "cheap" s-video cables? Is it that I've sent the signal through the recevier first? Or is it that the TV's Tuner does a better job than my Digital Cable box?
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"You advance yourself only by my good graces."

 

[Chris Rock]

Let me shed more light on my original post:
When I say that the picture from the TV tuner is "better", I mean that the colors are deeper, and the picture is not nearly as bright.
I don't want to mess with my brightness and picture settings too much, because I've calibrated the set using AVIA, and don't want to mess up the picture for DVD viewing.
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"You advance yourself only by my good graces."

 

[Glenn Overholt]

I've been through this, so you might want to try this one out. I have had splitters that only worked well on one side, so swap the connections to the splitter, and then swap the cables. Splitter to TV with the splitter to your box.
If you can send the coax to your TV instead of using the S-video, you might find out where the problem is.
Glenn