Hi, Mike, and welcome to the forum!
The following isn't meant to sound insulting. It's based off of what a friend of mine did a couple of years ago. He's a bright guy, but he wasn't familiar with A/V stuff. Make sure that you have the three component cables hooked up to the right connections on both the TV and the cable box. As an example, my friend hooked up the component video jacks on his TV to the composite video and left/right audio jacks on his satellite receiver. The result was fuzzy black and white video.
Adam