Another fun thing with processing that most people don't realize: almost all TVs will internally convert the input signal to YCbCr 4:2:2 for all this processing. Even though data is practically always transmitted as 4:4:4 over HDMI, and has to be converted back to RGB 4:4:4 to be displayed on the panel.
So if you have red/blue text (or anything with red/blue detail) looking awful, like it was lower resolution than it is, you have the TV to thank for that.
EDIT: to clarify, this doesn't apply if the text is a part of a movie (then you blame the codec for that, not the TV)
> and certainly everything in HDTV, Blu-ray, and DVD.
The HD broadcasts are 4:2:2, more often than not. There are a few stations that have their video servers down at 4:2:0, but many of those are scheduled to upgrade over the next 2 years.
Edit: The servers are 422, but the broadcasts are 420, as brigade points out. (The edit tag on my original comment has already expired. Grrr.)
I've assumed that the video settings of the server is what they were delivering, but there must be a down-sample on the way to the transmitter. (Cablelabs is the other large distribution format that we encounter, which yields the same story.)
So if you have red/blue text (or anything with red/blue detail) looking awful, like it was lower resolution than it is, you have the TV to thank for that.
EDIT: to clarify, this doesn't apply if the text is a part of a movie (then you blame the codec for that, not the TV)