Anamorphic widscreen the more i learn the more confused I become?

Question

I've got a DVD (collateral damage) which claims to be 1.85:1 widescreen, it is encoded raw at 720x576, so streached it should be 1066x576, here's thee thing though, most of my players read it and play it at 1024x576 (16:9) and when i looked at the raw image it has 85 pixel top/bottom black bars now 576-85-85=406 and 720/406 = 1.77 (16:9) so now i really am confused, someone please help

Answer 1

On DVD, "anamorphic" refers to what's known as anamorphic enhancement.

How this works is that the image is transfered as 16x9 on a 4x3 field.  When played back without anamorphic downconversion or played on a display that does not compensate for anamorphic formatting, the image will appear to be vertically stretched.  

On a display with an anamorphic mode, the lines are compressed closer together (or stretched horizontally), making the image appear to have about a 20%-30% increase in definition although the horizontal line count is never changed.

Anamorphic widescreen transfers on DVD make more efficient use of the available resolution on conventional 4x3 video that would otherwise be wasted to black bars on conventional letterbox widescreen transfers.

But, again, anamorphic enhanced video must be presented correctly for the images to appear properly.  This is done either by downconverting the image to 4x3, which reduces the resolution, or playing the video on a set that is capable of properly displaying anamorphic video.

And, you should know that, just because a transfer was done anamorphically, it does not mean that there will be no black bars.  There will still be black bars top and bottom whenever the image is wider than the screen (letterboxing) or black bars left and right whenever the image is taller than the screen (pillarboxing).

Addition:

The thing you need to know is that there are a few different aspect ratios in film.  1.85:1 isn't the only aspect ratio that is commonly used.  You also have aspect ratios like 2.35:1, which is a bit wider.  There are others, as well.

Answer 2

anamorphic widescreen means its widescreen without the black bars at the top and bottom....thats what i thought