Ok so I have bought the Toshiba HD player and now I need to break it in. I am going to hook everything up this weekend. I know just a few movies have been released but out of all the releases what movie would really show off my player and what title is everyone staying away from?

Serenity would be my pick if you could only choose one. Constantine isn't that great a movie, but it's the most demo-worthy title I've seen so far. We have a couple dozen HD DVD reviews here at DVD Talk if you'd like more detailed thoughts.

as a movie 'Serenity' did nothing for me.

Serenity does look fantastic. I haven't picked up Constantine yet, but I am looking forward to it. Also, if you enjoy Chronicles of Riddick, it looks pretty damn good as well, in fact I think that is the title I have been most impressed with so far.

I think Training Day is my favorite overall. I love the movie, but I thought the video quality was solid. That or Goodfellas would be my choice. For pure demo material, Doom is still my best disc. Too bad the story is slightly lacking.

This will all change once Batman Begins and King Kong are released.

I'd recommend Unforgiven. Great presentation and great movie. Doesn't have the flash and noise of the sci-fi titles... just a wonderful, subtle picture and soundtrack.

I don't know anything about your tastes, but my vote would be for Serenity.

I'd go with Bourne. Just a great movie anyway.

I'd have to say that Jarhead was more show-y.

the movie may not be all that great, but the HD-DVD edition of 'Phantom of the Opera' on my friends home theatre setup was pretty amazing.

It would be really hard to pick a bad one I think...

FMJ and Fugitive are apparently mastered from a 1080i source (if someone wants to explain that better, feel free) and are the 2 that everyone seems to be staying away from.

The ones that get the most votes on avs are:

Serenity
Training Day
U-571
Chronicles of Riddick (my personal favorite demo disc so far)

I wouldn't put much stock in any reviews. Way too varying of opinion. For example, if you read the CoR review at this site, you'll see that the reviewer thinks some of the scenes are upconverted and not even HD!!! Yet, by popular vote CoR is in the top 4 as far as PQ/AQ goes.

Another example is Perfect Storm. I just watched it last night and couldn't find anything wrong with it even though it has received both stellar reviews and abysmal reviews. Hell, I think PS looks as good or better than Apollo 13 (less grain in PS although that's probably the way Apollo 13 looks on film).

I'm viewing on a Sanyo PLC-XP21N (1024x768 resolution) using component input. Screen width is appx. 90".

Can you provide a quote? I've just re-read through the review several times and don't see anything like this.

I haven't seen Apollo 13, so I don't have that same source of comparison. The Perfect Storm has really only landed two negative reviews -- one from me, and the other from High Def DVD Digest. To my eyes, it's a somewhat noticeable but largely unimpressive step-up from what I'd expect from a standard definition DVD, and I suspect that this is a very old transfer that warmed over for this HD DVD. It's not horrific, but that "wow!" factor that's been present in just about every other HD DVD I've watched is nowhere to be found. Two other sites claim that it's the most impressive HD DVD on the market, and although I do understand that this sort of thing can be subjective, that to me is baffling.

even reviews from Widescreen Reviews' have been pretty picky - stating things like the audio is set lower than the standard DVD editions of the films - giving the overall impression that the new format isn't really up to par.

I heard that Rumor Has It is GOOD

I would vote for The Last Samurai just based on the fact that it is such an awesome f'ing movie. If you are just going for audio/video quality alone, then i don't really know what to suggest since i have only gotten around to watching 2 of my HD DVD's so far.

I totally agree!

I would get The Phantom of the Opera, but I know that's not everyone's cup of tea.

Just get something you like. Don't worry about whether it's appropriate for demo material or not. If there's nothing among the recent movies out now that you like, don't buy something just because it looks better than older films. There will be plenty of demo material in time.

That said, you may want to hold off on Full Metal Jacket and The Fugitive because of the 1080i issue, but I don't know much about that and how big of a deal it is.

I've removed the upconverting comment from the review. Since the intro before the movie states that the film's original negative was recut to assemble the "Director's Cut", it occurs to me that my suspicion about some of the new scenes being upconverted video probably isn't correct. Nonetheless, I stand by my statement that some parts of the movie look a little filtered, and that overall it's a nice-looking disc but didn't blow me away.

Depends on who you ask. There are many people on AVSForum who've posted comments similar to my own that the HD DVD looks a little soft.

I gave the video 4 stars out of 5, which is hardly trashing it. If I was disappointed in the disc, that's probably due to inflated expectations as much as anything.

Riddick does look sufficiently slick and glossy, but Last Samurai and Phantom of the Opera really provide a stunning sense of depth and detail that surpasses it. The final battle scene in Samurai, with those expansive wide shots of hundreds of armor-clad warriors charging through drifting clouds of smoke while cannon blasts churn up the ground around them is just amazing.

There's nothing in Riddick that good. Almost every shot in the movie is cluttered with excessive CGI, which tends to look a little soft by nature to make it blend with the live-action footage better.

It was removed from the review:

I was just pointing out that the reviews from everywhere seem sort of scattered. Some people saying that a disc is the 'best' and others saying the same disc is 'underwhelming'. Strange really...

Oh, I watched Perfect Storm again and noticed one scene with what I'd describe as a moire effect. Don't remember the scene, but it was a daytime scene in the bridge of the Andrea Gail where Clooney was standing next to the AC unit (the AC was on the left side of the screen). On the horizontal lines that run across the length of the AC, I noticed some interference (I think it looks like moire). I don't know if it is the display or the disc, though.

It was only on this one scene... the AC was in the picture for maybe 3 seconds. The other scenes with that same AC in it did not exhibit the same effect... Sorry, I don't have the time to go along with it, but I don't have PS anymore (it was a rental).

Anyone seen that and know what it is?

BTW, I also noticed one place in Apollo 13 where the same kind of thing was going on. It was on the grill of a car (lots of closely spaced vertical lines).

another vote for Serenity.

not only do you get great visuals and audio, but you get sparkling dialouge too. Makes it a real pleasure to pull it out and demo scenes over an over.

I'd also recommend Van Helsing too. I finally just saw it for the first time a couple weeks back via Netflix, and I enjoyed it so much I ended up buying a copy. Convinced me I need to stop taking popular opinion as gospel. A/V quality on this is also excellant, with many shots almost making me forget to breathe for a moment.

When they remastered these (and many other movies) from film to an HD master, they created a 1080i version since that's what HDTVs displayed. So that is what is ostensibly being used to make HD discs. Introducing the potential for interlacing artifacts.

More recently, everyone seems to be smarter and creates a 1080p HD master for each film.

To elaborate on this a little, the problem starts with the studio creating a 1080i master, but then is compounded when they tried to deinterlace it so that they could encode the HD DVD at 1080p. Unfortunately, the deinterlacing process used was a simple "bob" that loses vertical resolution and introduces artifacts (especially around diagonal lines in the image). So now, even though the HD DVD is technically 1080p, it suffers from 1080i deinterlacing artifacts that are hard-coded into the image and can't be helped by any sort of post-processing.

Had they simply encoded the disc at 1080i, it would be possible for some TVs and video processors to do a better job of the deinterlacing in the viewer's home. But they didn't want to do that for fear of catching flak for not using 1080p, because the Blu-Ray camp has ingrained it into everyone's head that the only "true HD" is 1080p and anything else is presumably "fake" HD (a completely false claim).

Well, it depends if you're looking for a quality movie or eye candy to show off HD-DVD.

My favorite "eye candy" demos in no particular order:

Chronicles of Riddick

Phantom of the Opera (especially the sequence first transitioning from B&W to color)

Blazing Saddles (the sharpness and color vividness in contrast to SD-DVD is stark)

Is Good Burger out on HD yet?

http://forum.dvdtalk.com/showthread.php?t=467432

I would have to say Chronicles of Riddick.

Never saw the movie in the theater but it looked great on my plasma!