Poor quality ProRes 422HQ exports compared to Final Cut 7 - suggestions?

At my workplace I'm looking at using Creative Cloud to replace Final Cut 7, but I'm having a really hard time producing broadcast quality ProRes 422HQ exports using Media Encoder. Detail levels are comparable but large areas of colour (e.g. a blue sky) show noticeable visual noise.
Looking closer you can see only 3 or 4 bands of colour with pixelated edges, whereas FCP deals with these gradients in a much more subtle way.
Source files are 1080p H264 movs from a Canon 5D and Final Cut exports (even from FCPX) just seem so much better.
More worryingly, I've even tried using AME's Animation codec or even Non-Compressed and the results are still quite a bit worse than a Final Cut 7 ProRes 422HQ export (we export from the timeline rather than using Compressor). Some tests I've done exporting to H264 at 12Mbps are also definitely inferior to Final Cut.
There aren't that many options to adjust - ticking Maximum Depth and Maximum Render Quality just adds lots of horizontal lines to the final file. Format is Quicktime, Renderer is set to Mercury Playback Engine Software Only.
Am I missing anything obvious or is Media Encoder just not as good? If so how is anyone using it in a broadcast workflow?
Below are some screenshots which I've made black and white and boosted the brightness so it's easier to see, but the pixelisation is noticeable on the normal exported movs and seems to be a definite step-down from FCP7.
This could well be a deal-breaker in terms of using Creative Cloud in the future - which would be very disappointing as the software itself seems great.
01 - H264 Raw - from Canon 5D:
02 - Final Cut ProRes 422HQ:
03 - Adobe Media Encoder ProRes 422HQ:
04 - Adobe Media Encoder ProRes 422HQ (Maximum Depth, Maximum Render Quality):
05 - Media Encoder Settings:
Sorry for the long post - any suggestions gratefully accepted!
Chris

Thanks for the response Kevin,
I fully updated as of last week - Premiere 8.1.0, Media Encoder 8.1.0.122 and ran the export again with a brand new Premiere project, dragged into a sequence, export media, selected Quicktime / ProRes 422HQ codec, matched the frame size, pressed queue to open Media Encoder and the started the export.
Exactly the same results I'm afraid - blocky, pixelated areas on gradients or areas of similar color.
Frustratingly, the free and 6 year old Mpeg Streamclip (v1.9.2) does a much better job, on a par with Final Cut. I don't suppose there's any way to automatically route the export via it?! Where Media Encoder uses 3 or 4 color shades with blocky finite edges, Streamclip and FCP seem to use 6 or 7 shades and the transitions between areas far smoother with visible dithering (you can see this in my original screenshots).
I would say that it seems to do with the source camera and how it's been originally encoded - I've done some further tests with Canon C300 rushes and they seem to convert / export well without problems and yet some blue skies in footage shot on a Sony F55 show some obvious banding (after conversion to ProRes 422HQ) that doesn't appear on the source.
I'm happy to provide the raw H264 mov to see if you are able to get any better results.
Chris

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