Originally posted by: Fang Zei

I'm just wondering if there are widescreen dvd's out there that were mastered from actual film elements but for some reason were presented on dvd 4:3 letterbox instead of anamorphically.

Well, if you think about it, every 35mm movie transferred to video is mastered from 35mm elements. You probably mean if any new non-anamorphic transfer was specifically made for DVD for widescreen movies.

The answer is: no. Every non-anamorphic transfer is either a non-widescreen movie, or the DVD was mastered using an old laserdisc/video master.