I'll soon be purchasing a new PB, either the 15" or 17".

Will the DVD-R (Superdrive) in those machines working with DVD SP create high enough quality dvds for showing at festivals, theatres, etc?

Is tape still a better archive option?

Will DVD SP work with HD?

thanks much,
elmer

DVD SP will work perfectly, its the encoder you need to worry about for video quality. Personally i have never submitted anything to a festival or at a theater, but i would assume the encoder (compressor) should do a decent job, if your still worried there are plenty of stand alone encoder programs out there.
VitBice is one i have heard plenty of good things about heres their URL
http://www.innobits.com/
I havent ever used it because im satisfied with the results i get from compressor for my job. Anywho, about HD, no, not possible. DVD's are not HD compatible, nor can they be as of now, the best they can do is 480p, as opposed the like 720p of HD, Pop in lets say, the Lord of the Rings two towers, and your getting a standard definition picture, the difference? Thousands of dollars worth of encoding, manually and on huge beasts of encoders. So, start off with HD and get a nice picture, but once you get to the DVD its no longer HD, sad, but true.

Hope that helps...