I just bought shooter off of ebay and the quality of the picture doesnt look near as good to me as it did when i rented from netflix. Is there any way to tell if this disc was homemade or something? It came sealed and has artwork on the disc and has the insert in the case of upcoming hd dvd releases. But i am aware that you can buy spare hd dvd cases, print covers, and buy separate cases. So is there any way to tell?

Umm, play it? I haven't heard of any successful HD DVD bootlegs since there aren't any HD DVD burners out yet.

It plays fine...if it didnt play I wouldnt be able to comment on its quality.

It plays fine...if it didnt play I wouldnt be able to comment on its quality.
Put it in your computer's DVD drive to see if it is recognized. Maybe somebody burned you a DVD?

Is the quality really that bad?

I wouldnt say the quality is bad but when i rented it I was in awe of the picture. So i bought it to show it to some non HD loving friends and after talking about how great it looks and showing it to them i felt like an idiot because it wasnt that amazing. So I had to make up for it by showing them black snake moan. It is an hd dvd though becasue it had the dolby true hd tracks.

When I play a HD DVD on my Toshiba HD-A2 I get a HD DVD display on the front of the unit before it starts playing. If it wasn't HD this read out would not come up. Check it out when you first start it up. I don't know if this applies to other models. Sometimes I find I can out think myself. It might be that you just felt differently when you first played the rental disc. And maybe not the same when you played the second. Once you get a doubt in your mind it is hard to get rid of.

Are you sure that it was not a combo disc? You maybe played the DVD version of the movie?