Wanted to get to the theater to see the well received Transformers movie but it didn’t happen. Went to buy it from Best Buy the other day in HD-DVD format — sorry Blu-ray fans, Paramount is HD-DVD only — but they were sold out. So yesterday afternoon we searched other stores.

Fred Meyer had it for $34.99 which is more than I’d liked to have paid but the 24 hours of special features including enhanced web feature sucked me in. I’m happy with the purchase. We would have spent that $35 in the theater after the tickets, popcorn and drinks. If you can be more patient than me, Amazon has Transformers HD-DVD (affiliate) for $27.99 as of this writing.

So as soon as we got home I fired up the Xbox HD-DVD drive and loaded the first disc. The first load took awhile while as it loaded feature and check out the screenshot — asking for permission to put a cookie on the HD-DVD drive! Something not normally seen with the regular DVD watching experience, huh?

Once it loaded I needed to register at Paramount’s HD web content site with username, password, email, age and whether I wanted to receive future offers from them. Worked flawlessly, although typing with the controller UI is slow. I should have used our USB keyboard instead or go buy that cool looking Xbox 360 Text Input device (affiliate).

Note: you can skip this step if you want to jump in and start watching the movie, but I wanted to watch it the very first time with the web enhanced features. You can’t get that experience anywhere else but the HD-DVD which I was excited about seeing.

Once registered, you’re automatically logged in, so click the ‘play’ button in the Intelligence Center and the Transformers movie loads with a matte around the screen containing information about the health status of each of the Transformers. They are dark until the Transformer(s) appears in the movie.

As each Transformer takes damage, similar to a fighting video game, the health bar goes down from full health (white) to dark red (almost dead) to off the chart black (dead). Along the way little bits and pieces of movie backstory popup in the bottom of the screen. Sometimes humorous snippets like asking why the main character isn’t kissing the girl.

The plot of the movie for those who haven’t seen, no spoilers, revolves around a struggle for a powerful alien cube that crashed to earth. The bad Transformers, known as DECEPTICONS are trying to recover the cube while the good Transformers known as AUTOBOTS are trying to prevent that from happening. Cliched: a covert division of the military knows about it and has frozen the DECEPTICON leader.

The leader of the AUTOBOTS is Optimus Prime who takes the form of a Semi-truck. The guard AUTOBOT is called Bumblebee who doesn’t have a voice and thus uses songs on the car radio to utter phrases (neat idea!). Bumblebee protects the main character, Sam Witwicky, who has a pair of broken glasses with the location of alien cube. How to the Transformers know about Sam possessing the glasses? He’s trying to sell them on eBay, of course.

AUTOBOTS will not hurt humans while DECEPTICONS have no problem wiping out mankind. A classic, albeit fun good vs. evil story.

Sam is a quirky younger guy who looks a little bit like Wil Wheaton (Star Trek Next Generation Wesley Crusher) and has a love interest in a hot girl being played by Megan Fox. And yes, Megan looks terrific at 1080p, start drooling on your remotes now. Also notable in the cast is the guy who plays Danny (Josh Duhamel) in the hit TV show Las Vegas. Duhamel plays a military commander with a squadron sort of caught in the middle of the battle.

The acting overall wasn’t outstanding, but the real fun is the Transformers and various battles which do not disappoint. Great special effects, easily among the best I’ve ever seen which has the bar set pretty high by the ILM (Industrial Light and Magic) team.

The end battle is rewarding and teases sequel. Since Transformers grossed pretty well in the theater (#19 all time per Box Office Mojo) and deserves to sell a ton of HD-DVD and DVDs, we can probably expect a Transformers 2.

As I write this I’m itching to watch it again. If you buy or already own an HD-DVD player, Transformers is a must have for the collection. Finally an HD-DVD movie experience that offers something engaging during the movie experience besides behind the scenes commentary (and yes, it has that too). This is easily my favorite to date animated to big screen adaption and HD-DVD experience. Think I’m going to put the animated Transformers on my wish list. The only thing that prevents Transformers from having a higher grade is the acting. Keep in mind that my grade is for the HD-DVD experience, not the DVD or theater experience. Grade: A-.

• Record 100,000 Transformers HD DVD sold on first day
• Theater-style popcorn vs. microwave popcorn
• Review: Scooby Doo 2: Monsters Unleashed
• Comcast wants to shrink PPV window
• Indiana Jones and The Crystal Skull is yawn inspiring
• Blu-Ray alert: my first customer experience with Mission Impossible set