Puggo - Jar Jar's Yoda said:
While I understand (now) that the LD master was letterboxed, presumably that master was made from some earlier scan. I'd also imagine that that scan was better resolution than letterboxed 4:3.
I'm pretty sure a fairly direct film->...->D-1 pipeline was used. The storage costs for a digital scan of a film at >NTSC resolution would have been massive in '92/93 and it still would have been on tape.