Mielr, tell your niece to get the HD channels. The difference is like night and day. On a bad day, yeah, the over compressed stuff looks nasty, but most of the time it looks beautiful. I've found that it's more the SD channels that get over compressed and look like hell than it is the HD channels.

SD channels still look bad on a 50" HDTV CRT (that's what I have) if you're closer than 10 ft. From 20 ft away they look alright (my couch is 20 ft away, across the room), but HD still looks a ton better.