From what I’ve been reading, VP’s MAY, or MAY NOT help cable / satellite. Whenever I ask, I get the “garbage in, garbage out” response. But numerous folks on different forums all swear by them and that they do help regardless of input.

Some VP’s are better for SD video, SD film, and HD inputs. None seam to do all of them equally well. To date, I’m leaning toward the Crystalio II VPS-3800. It’s quite expensive though, about $3500US. Most users claim it is the most advanced and will process any source very well. The 3800 has a media player as well. The 3300 does not have the media player and it $500 less.

I’ve been following this string at AVS. http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?t=688903

And if you are going to go the VP route, you might as well get a DVD player with a good MPEG decoder and have it modified for SDI output right off the decoder. It is the “cleanest” way to get true data to the VP.