Other options include 16:9 WIDESCREEN - oh, wait, answered my own question. Apparently he's got two separate French subtitle tracks on there in different aspect ratios? Weird.
Still: the audio is weird too. Do I choose 5.1 NEAR-FIELD MONITOR PLAYBACK or 5.1 DOLBY DIGITAL FAR-FIELD MONITOR PLAYBACK? What the heck do those mean?
Even more annoyingly, the DVD has the English subtitles burned into the image, and there appears to be something seriously wrong with the authoring: playback is incredibly jerky and looks like crap. This might have something to do with it coming from a video, not a film source, and all of that 1080p/24 voodoo that makes other discs look so good. I just fiddled with every last control on the TV and HD DVD player and nothing seems to fix the problem. Grrr. Maybe it'll be OK in the Xbox 360?