Originally posted by: eros
changing ld ripped video to anamorphic will degrade picture detail and sharpness.

No, it won't.

There you go: two almost-useless sentences, completely opposite, with equal amounts of proof (i.e. none) to support them.

I really, REALLY, get tired of people espousing some dogma or another without any sort of proof or analysis on their part. Moth3r provides tons of good information, backed up with references (of a kind) and personal experience, and still someone posts a one-liner something like "changing ld ripped video to anamorphic will degrade picture detail and sharpness".

I happen to be in the camp that says anamorphic made from LD will NOT degrade picture detail and sharpness. At least, it doesn't have to. Why do I think that? Because I've actually played with this sort of thing at length, and read at even greater length about others doing similar things. Any competent filter chain can improve the picture quite a bit as the size goes up -- hell, a lot of the procedures in AviSynth super-sample the picture to several times its original size in order to get better results! Anyone who says otherwise hasn't put in the time reading in the right places and experimenting with the right filters.