I am not really familiar with the US image. I am in Israel, and have used the OZTivo images so far.
We are in Pal system, so I prefer PAL (although all our TVs here are multisystem).
It's a good idea to check the HD.
Perhaps the problem was that I recently upgraded to 1.6 image from 1.3 . Perhaps this did not
go perferctly well?

Gideon.