I've tuned it manually to the TV channel 14 initially, but now it's actually tuned to CH 1. ... It doesn't make any difference.
I think there are two issues going on:
1) bad signal coming out of the Atari (I've tested on a different television, and the double-screen problem does not replicate over, but the terrible signal and sound does)
2) on this television, there is a sync issue I believe... lower priority, I want to fix the Atari first, then the sync if that makes sense...