Does anyone know if imports ever use a different transfer than their U.S. counterparts? Just wondering, as there were some movies I was interested in picking up that were available as imports on one format, and were U.S. releases on another...and if they used a different transfer, there would be a possibility that the PQ might be better/worse in some cases.

Yes, they may use different transfer. There has been lots of discussion in the HD DVD forum detailing how the HD DVD imports are different from the Bluray domestic releases.

I think they're different encodes rather than different transfers. The HD-DVD versions of Underworld Evolutions and T2 are the same transfers as the BRDs but are better compressed using vc-1. Total Recall is also supposed to be better than it's BRD counterpart but not sure if it uses the same transfer as the US. Either way the audio is screwed up (pitch problem).

It was reported that the non-US version of Serenity had a better vc-1 encode but it turned out to be false.