Lara Croft: Tomb Raider HD-DVD review

[JimPullan]

I just set up a HD-DVD Player in my store (while waiting on the Blu-Ray from Pioneer Elite or Sony) so my customers can see a 1080 mastered DVD. I'm displaying the image on a Sony 60" SXRD XBR2 TV. I went and bought Lara Croft: Tomb Raider and have been using it as a store demo since Monday, the 18th., playing the movie continuously from 10:00 am to 6:00 pm

First, the player is very slow loading, once beyond that I explored the Disc features, then did the set-up, and began the movie. The feature of calling up the menu while the movie is playing is nice to have, especially when you want the director's commentary on for a particular scene.

The over all image quality at 1080i was quite acceptable, alot of foreground and background detail in the scenes made viewing attractive and eye-popping. Everyone who views it, likes it. Apparently both the player and the Disc are in excellent sync, because I have not had any issues over the 40 hours it was playing, and that's a good thing.

The detail in the dark scenes were just great and I don't know if that's because of the quality of the display or the quality of the mastering and transfer of the Disc. Maybe a combination of both, I suppose. I do look forward to other movie purchases this next week. Any recommendations for reference level quality Hd-DVD's (Best Image!) ?

I'm just wondering if we can actually discern the difference between the 1080i unit and the 1080p unit coming out around Thanksgiving time ? Possibly on the front projection / large screen set-ups it might be noticable. We'll see soon !!!
Jim