Just sent you an email Jim... here is my answer to your part 3:
Anyways, my workflow for watching HD DVDs on my HDTV is as follows:
- Capture as HDV in a HDV project. I use either PE3, PE2 with the Mainconcept Elements Plugin or ULEAD VideoStudio 10+. The latter two allow me to use smart rendering so that unedited sections of the HDV footage is not re-rendered on export. PE3 will re-render on HDV MPEG2 export and thus introduce a generation of quality loss. It is not very noticeable, but can be seen. I edit the project and export as a HDV MPEG2 file.
- I bring this into ULEAD DVD MovieFactory 6+ which allows me to add a menu and burn to a standard DVD. At the 25MB/s HDV MPEG2 quality I can get 20mins on a standard DVD or 40 mins on a dual layer DVD. By reducing the bitrate I can get more on but I lose a little quality.
- I then play the DVD in my computer using CyberLink Power DVD HD DVD Edition (Edition 7.3) which allows you to play HD DVDs if your computer meets the required specs. That is a fast processor and a suitable graphics card... the graphics card has hardware acceleration which takes some of the load off the processor. The graphics card I have has HDTV Component outputs which are connected to my HDTV.
Or you can buy a Toshiba HD DVD player for ~ $300 which will play the HD DVDs directly to your HDTV. However I can not use it as it currently does not supported PAL 50i only NTSC 60i. So you could go this way.
http://www.amazon.com/Toshiba-HD-A2-HD- ... B000IJV4BC