Here is my theory on showing off a home theater:
To impress people you have a limited amount of time to make a quick impact. So you have the option of starting with a movie, like Saving Private Ryan as you mentioned, that starts off with a bang. That will give them the wow factor you are after. The other option is to pick a movie where you can jump to a scene with good sound and visual effect. The problem is then you have to cut to the middle of a movie which may spoil the overall experience. What to do? How do you make a big impact in a short amount of time?
What does every movie theater start with, apart from commercials? They start with a preview/trailer. A trailer has only 60 seconds to convince the audience to lay down $10 the next time they want to see a movie. They often start out with "that narrator guy's" voice introducing the movie. I am sure you know who I am talking about. Then it is 45 seconds of that movies best sound effects, visual effects and hopefully some dialog as well. My favorite for this is Lost in Space. The trailer has all the elements I mentioned as well as full 5.1 sound, some good orchestral music and high quality MPEG 2 encoding for the video. Many DVD's have trailers with 2 channel stereo and grainy video. This one is good. Also, the title is family oriented so you don't need to worry about offending anyone.
After that put in a movie and you are good to go. I will also often demo the Dolby Digital trailers that came on DVD Spectacular but they are 4:3 ratio.
Good luck.
Greg
