Really need help! Imac won't boot up.

Seems to have happened shortly after I updated iTunes, but when I try to boot up, it just hangs at the apple logo with the spinning gear icon. Sometimes it shuts down after about 5 minutes, sometimes it just hangs there forever. I've tried booting off the DVD and running Disk Utility. The only option given is to verify disk, and when I run it, it fails with "error: filesystem verify or repair failed". It also doesn't give me an option to run archive and install ... only erase. I tried that and halfway through the dvd authentication process, it says it cannot read the DVD (I know it's good).
Also tried to boot in safe mode. Just stays at the apple logo. Can't eject the DVD, either.
I'm basically dead in the water. Could really use some advise.
Thanks

Texas Station wrote:
Ok, for whatever reason, I was able to boot up with the DVD and Disk Utility sees the Macintosh HD volume now. But when I try to run the install, I get "Mac OS X cannot be upgraded to v 10.5 on your computer. Mac OS X v10.4 or later could not be found on your computer" I'm on 10.5.6. Any ideas where to go from here?
Before you reinstall, run the DU from the DVD and see if you can repair the HD. The menu is at the top left after the language screen.
If your disk is an up-to-date disk, or whatever it was called, it may require reinstalling Tiger first.

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