300 HD DVD - very cool bonus feature

"Bluescreen Picture-in-Picture Version" of the film where the entire film of 300 is shown without the CGI & post processing. Here you learn that in fact the actor playing Xerxes is about the same height as Gerard Butler and during blue screen filming he was talking to a stub with a screwdriver improvised as a head :-)

Movie only (PIP commentary off)

Maybe my last post is a good segue to this one. Many of the bonus features in early HD disc releases have been straight 480i ports of the SD DVDs. Part of the value proposition for the new hi-def optical formats have been enhancements to the bonus features like PIP video commentaries / documentaries. What this means is that you can play a video commentary (as opposed to audio only in regular DVD) in a smaller window alongside the movie presentation . I initially thought it was gimmicky but after trying it out on a few movies, I have found myself enjoying this feature more than the audio commentary track as it allows you to see and hear scene-for-scene what director and production crew did behind the camera.

Side note: The picture quality of the movie itself is not reflected well on these screenshots due to Zack Snyder intentionally injecting a lot of grain, cranking up the contrast, and heavily desaturating the colors of the film to approximate the look of the original graphic novel. With that said, you can take my word for it that the 300 HD DVD is a great HD presentation and really looks like HD. Since the 300 HD DVD is a combo release with the SD version on side B I've watched a bit of it as well. Don't get me wrong. The upscaled SD version is very good in itself but doesn't have the fine detail, depth, and punch of the HD version.