Had Freesat on a Humax box for about 3 months now but I'm disappointed with the SD picture which is much better (cleaner and sharper) on Freeview. Is this normal?

Since ITV 1 upped it's res to 704 x 576 on sat there's very little difference with the picture on my setup. There are some very slightly better on Freesat and vice versa.

The BBC SD channels seem a lot less sharp. I have both so I can switch but just wondered whether this would improve some time soon.

How have you got the hdr connected. ? Many report that SD using RGB scart looks better (ie letting the TV do the scaling from 576i)

Via the HDMI cable. What happens if both the HDMI and scart leads are connected?

You just change the TV input source to hdmi for HD and whatever scart socket for SD. Make sure you use the TV scart on the hdr (the vcr one does not have RGB) and the scart socket on the TV is RGB capable

Many thanks Graham - very useful. I'll give that a go.