I agree with you, making the video anamorphic is an abuse of the source material. Make it progressive, yes, make it anamorphic, no. No offense, DanielB, but calling a change from non-anamorphic to anamorphic an "abuse" is pretty misinformed. Even if the source is non-anamorphic, the re-encoding does translate to a sharper picture on a widescreen(-capable) monitor, especially larger ones. Seeing as how Star Wars is shot in one of the widescreen ratios (roughly 2.35:1), the change from letterbox to anamorphic is only natural. And the concept of making something progressive without anamorphic enhancement is ludicrous, unless the title is a full-screen (1.33:1) release, like a TV show/anime series or early film. Perhaps you need to visit some sites like http://widescreen.org or http://www.thedigitalbits.com/articles/anamorphic/ to refresh your knowledge of the subject.
There are DVD players on the market for these kind of people that will turn non-anamorphic video into anamorphic on the fly.

AFAIK, no DVD player can change a title from non-anamorphic to anamorphic. A lot of TVs, especially DTVs, use a stretch and/or zoom function combined with sharpening, but that's not the same. If you can provide evidence of a model that does, please let us know.

Of course, you sound pretty set in your ways, but almost any home-theater enthusiast will disagree with you. Maybe you're viewing a lot of material on a monitor that is either too small to show any change in sharpness or detail, or is incapable of the anamorphic squeeze. Even on a non-digital but squeeze-capable 32" TV, the difference is obvious to myself and almost everyone I know. On a widescreen large monitor or projector, it's almost night and day. Feel free to visit http://www.hometheaterforum.com for more information and/or discussion.