This is a follow-on the a forum post located here: https://www.lotterypost.com/thread/142461.htm

I located a web site that has photographs somebody took of his screen, which shows the difference between standard DVD movies and the new HD-DVD format. 

Note, HD-DVD is not the same thing as Blu-Ray, which is actually a competing high definition format.  The average Circuit City salesperson would confuse the issue, depending on which type of player they want to sell that day, but understanding that they are two distinctly different formats (HD-DVD and Blu-Ray) is important before making a purchase.  In my opinion, HD-DVD is better right now.

Anyway, back to the comparisons of HD-DVD to standard DVD (the type of DVD player that is right now hooked up to just about everyone's TV).

The photographs are good, in that they provide a good illustration of how that regular DVD picture -- which everyone, including myself, thought was so awesome -- looks like it has a blurry haze over it, compared to HD-DVD.  The pictures obviously cannot help someone understand the differences in sound quality, but from someone who owns both technologies, I can attest that the sound is improved at least to the same degree that the video is improved.

The interesting thing about the photos is that the person's video projector used to project the movie in the photos is not even displaying the HD-DVD video in the native 1080i or 1080p resolution, so it is being downconverted to whatever maximum resolution his projector supports.  That means the video, when shown with an appropriate TV or projector, will look better than what is shown, with a more striking comparison to standard DVD.

Here is one of the comparisons, taken from the movie Troy.  For the ladies's benefit I have posted a Brad Pitt comparison.

Pretty amazing, huh?  It's like the standard DVD had the camera out of focus.  I can tell you, it really does make a difference, especially for people with larger TV sets or projectors.

The rest of the comparison can be found here.  You can find a previous comparison the same person did with the movie Seabiscuit here.