Blu Ray = Blurry?

Before lunch today, Viks and I went to Best Buy cause I wanted to check out the just released Samsung Blu-Ray player. They had a demo of Hitch on a Samsung 42" LCD TV. The demo was pretty underwhelming..the picture was grainy, soft and really lacked that HD "punch" I was expecting. I wouldn't say the picture looked bad but IMHO, it didn't look that much better than upconverted SD. I have read similar testimonials in the AVS forums. Could it be a poor transfer? initial BR MPEG2 encoding vs the HD-DVD MPEG4/VC-1 encoding? the Samsung player (ie time to market product)? Unfortunately an apples-to-apples comparison between BR vs HD-DVD is not possible now due to studio support. Despite that, one would have to give the picture quality edge to HD-DVD today. But of course it's still too early to declare any winner. I crave HD content but am frustrated that I feel the need to sit on the sidelines because of this format war. It has taken some will power not to buy a $500 HD-DVD player but I will not buy a first gen and I think there will be universal players coming or studios supporting both sides.