Say you have an HD TV with a QAM tuner, but do not have hd channels. will regular channels look better?

QAM is for HD - Cable signals....... ATSC is for OVER THE AIR CHANNELS.....and you do have HD ATSC signals coming from your LOCAL TV stations.... All you need to do is connect a good, REALLY good antenna to your TV set, and set it to recieve ANT signals and Autoprogram it..... But that is because .....IF you have QAM......THEN you should also have ATSC or at least a DIGITAL tuner built into your TV set..... I would NOT EXPECT a manufacturer to stuff a QAM tuner in your TV set, and not have that SAME TUNER built to recieve Digital/ATSC signals. That would be rediculous.... So....EXPECT your QAM tuner to have ATSC/Digital reception too....

That depends on the details that you left out of the question. A QAM tuner is only used to receive digital TV signals on some cable systems; so I assume that you have cable service. If you have a choice of receiving your "regular" non-HD programs using either an analog (NTSC) or digtial (QAM) channels, then you can expect the digital (QAM) channels to look better. If your situation is different, add the details to your question. For example, if you only get your "regular" channels using your TVs analog tuner, then having a QAM tuner in the TV will not have any effect on picture quality.