Need TV help please? (Expert question)?

Unfortunately you have a collection of low quality products. Grundig used to be a well respected manufacturer of electronic goods, but for well over thirty years their brand has been unreliable. I know this from personal experience of Grundig equipment for a considerable time. Bush is a "brand" that should be avoided at all costs (along with Technika, Alba, tevion, etc). The Metronic box is not well designed. You, the viewer, should not have to set up output "resolutions" because you do not know what the broadcaster is sending. ALL broadcast HD in the UK is either 720p/50 or 1080i/50. You will Never get 1080p or anything else from Freeview. A well designed Freeview box will match its output to the input programme format automatically. If you are setting the box to something other than 1080i or 720p then it will not be compatible with the incoming signal. You have to know what the broadcaster is sending and then set the box accordingly. They do not tell you what format is being sent, it can vary from programme to programme. For example: If you have the box set to 1080p and the incoming signal is being transmitted at 720p then the box cannot give the optimum quality of output. It will try to compromise, which probably explains why you're disappointed with the results. Do not buy a Bush or Toshiba telly. The "Tosh" is vastly better than a Bush but it's still not a proper solution for you. The best thing that you can do is to save up for a bit longer and buy a Panasonic or Sony television with a built in HD tuner. These are high quality reliable manufacturers with good UK support organisations. The telly will last for at least five years, probably more, so they're better value overall. The sets don't cost much more than Toshiba and you won't be messing around with separate "Metronic" boxes.

Make sure you're tuning the HD freeview channels, not the standard definition channels. The HD channels are different broadcasts and have different channel numbers.