What's the difference between widescreen and anamorphic widescreen?

Answer 1

"For a film shot in 1.85:1 aspect ratio, a letterbox presentation uses only 345 scan lines. The same aspect ratio in anamorphic widescreen uses 461 scan lines (or all 480 scan lines if the telecine operator chooses to throw away a tiny bit of side image and present the film as 1.78:1). Similarly, for a film shot at 2.35:1, a letterbox presentation uses only 272 scan lines. An anamorphic widescreen presentation uses 363 scan lines. The additional detail is startling on a big screen, on any screen size from 35 inches and upward the difference should be clear. And when viewing an anamorphic widescreen DVD with the aid of a line doubler, the line structure all but disappears."

So the big benefit is really more scan lines which results in better picture quality (less granular) while still maintaining a large image.

Answer 2

Anamorphic Widescreen Vs Widescreen

Answer 3

Anamorphic is a Hollywood trick to use a special lens (called anamorphic) to fit more material on a standard 4:3 film (frame).
In the movie theaters they used a special lens to "uncompress" the anamorphic image before they display it in the screen.

From a DVD player's point of view, it is all done digitally.