A couple of things at play here Rick. First, The Last Samurai is widely regarded as only an average HD-DVD transfer. It was in the first batch of HD-DVD's released, and is nowhere near reference quality. Take a look at Happy Feet, or Hot Fuzz, or Planet Earth, or many others, and you'll see what HD-DVD has to offer.

Second, it is a known fact that one really needs to update the firmware on these HD-DVD players as soon as they receive them. You can call it a POS, but this need to update the firmware just comes with the territory of getting into HD-DVD. It takes just a few minutes to download the latest firmware, burn it, and update it in the player. These Toshibas are essentially computers, and can be glitchy. The firmware updates are important.

In the end, if you just don't buy into this, no big deal. But right now you're not seeing HD-DVD at anywhere near its best.