i dont know if i fully understand the anamorphic dvd player issue but heres my shot:
when you play an amorphic dvd on a normal tv set, the picture you see is actually "compressed" to fit the screen, so some of the resolution of the dvd is lost by the black lines showing at the top and bottom the screen, the black lines take up available lines of resolution. when you watch an anamorphic dvd an a widescreen set, the picture isnt compressed or tweaked in any way, it fits the screen using all the resolution that is encoded on the dvd, the picture is being displayed in its native format.
a dvd player playing a non anamorphic dvd without the black bars is actually scaling the image to fit right. this is the equivalent of say taking a 200 dpi image in photoshop and increasing the image to 300 dpi, the resolution "is" technically increased and may or may not look better depending on the situation, but this increase in resolution is artificial...
hows that, am i going in the right direction?