Ok, first off I did a search but it was kind of pointless considering every thread out there has a post containing the word "anamorphic."

This may be a stupid question but I'm kind of confused about something.
Don't they have to crop a movie for an anamorphic transfer if it was not shot anamorphically (every movie before 2000)? I read somewhere that movies had to be cropped and I was wondering if someone could elaborate. This is kind of what has puzzled me because just about everyone is so concerned about a DVD having the OAR, I am one of those people. But then again the same people complain about it not being anamorphic, I am not one of those people. So, essentially isn't it the same thing they do to a movie to make it fullscreen or pan and scan?

I also don't understand the big deal with an anomorphic transfer. Now before you jump all over me, I don't have a widescreen TV because A) they are too exspensive for me and B) I frankly don't think the picture looks very good.

So, any help on this matter would be great because I'm trying to understand.

Thanks.

See these: http://www.dvdfile.com/news/special_...anamorphic.htm
http://www.thedigitalbits.com/articl...hic/index.html

As long as a film is widescreen, making it anamorphic shouldn't involve any cropping.

Thanks guys, I appreciate it.

Shooting a movie anamorphically (which has been going on since the 1950s) is not the same as anamorphic enhancement on DVDs.

Ah. So why do we use the same term? IS it because they are both squeezed?

Bingo.

I've always like this page about how film is transferred to video. It details both anamorphic film and anamorphically enhanced video, as well as all the other filming and transfer methods.

http://modeemi.cs.tut.fi/~leopold/AV/FilmToVideo/