I’ve really wanted HD-DVD for a while now but I’ve just seen this comparison between an HD broadcast of Fellowship of the Ring and the standard DVD. Hold your mouse over the DVD shot and it’ll change to the HD version so that you can easily see the difference.

The amount of detail that the HD version has over the DVD is quite striking, but bear in mind that it should be even better with the real thing. HD broadcasts are around 12Mbps (a little more than the maximum 10Mbps for DVD) and HD-DVDs will be more like 25Mbps, and the HD shots are scaled down to DVD resolution so when you see them in their full 720p/1080i/1080p glory they should be more detailed still. I need it now…

Some people have complained that the DVD doesn’t look as bad as those shots suggest, but they look similar to a DVD upscaled for an HDTV (albeit slightly worse, which probably comes from them being upscaled to 1920×1080 for the comparison), so it’s a fairly good comparison of how the two sources will look on that new TV that’s only getting a workout with the 360.