Cable TV Set Top Box + TV Tuner Question

Hey there,

Im new to this technology so apologies if I ask a dumb question!

I recently installed a TV tuner to my secondary PC-DVico Fusion HDTV 7 RT Express. Connecting to the set top box, I thought ALL my cable channels would appear but I discovered the encrypted channels (ie the good ones) were blocked.

To get around this, I connected the set top box to the TV tuner via component cables. Now ALL my cable channels are visible on my PC.

The quality is OK but definitely NOT the same quality as before. My questions :

1. Is there any way to get BETTER quality pictures? ex high quality component cables or using a HDMI input TV tuner.
2. I noticed the card was using my HD3870 graphics card drivers. If I upgraded to a 5xxx series card (ie Directx11), would this improve picture quality?
3. Does Directx have any relationship to picture quality of TV channels?

Thanks in advance.

This is coming out soon and will solve issues with running a cable box into your tuner card,
Ceton's quad CableCARD tuner for Windows Media Center gets a price -- Engadget
Just need this and a cablecard from your provider and you have access to all of the channels you subscribe to.

Thanks for your quick turn around.

Living in Korea, I enquired about cable cards to my cable provider. They said that they dont have them due to media laws.

I also enquired about DVD recorders. Apparently they also have locks on them (also due to media laws) to stop the recording of HD/encrypted channels.

BTW, is my component cable the "weak" link in this setup?