I saw once at Wal-Mart, lenticular, says it's anamorphic. I know the first dvd releases weren't. What about this one thought?

It's a misprint. None of the releases of "The Abyss" have been anamorphic.

It's referring to the main menu, IIRC. The movie itself is non-anamorphic.

no.

Anamorphic Widescreen version of "The Abyss"

Yes it's true. It is available in Region-6 commie China for Excel Media/Fox!
Now as of where to buy it... yesasia and buyoyo don't have it in stock...
But it seems to be confirmed by dvdtherapy and dvdcompare too.

I'm leery of the Region 6 version. The review of the video quality in the link you provided is ambiguous as well:

"Minted from the same transfer that blessed the original Laserdisc and DVD, I’m glad to report that this newly struck anamorphic transfer is a much-needed upgrade from the original DVD."

Well, which is it? Is it from the same transfer struck for the Laserdisc and DVD, which is nonanamorphic and therefor artificially enhanced, or is it a newly struck transfer?

I suspect the former.

I'm guessing he means that colors and contrast looks the same as the old laserdisc and dvd, but now upgraded.

Over at the HTF, Van Ling, a frequent Cameron collaborator and the one who produced the original SE of The Abyss stated that no DVD version out now has a true 16:9 transfer.

He did state however that one is available, but waiting for approval by Cameron before a new release would happen.

Note that this discussion was about the Blu-ray, but I'd imagine a new DVD release would happen in conjunction with the Blu-ray's debut.

If I was a Fox exec, I'd be pushing to get a new edition in stores on the same day as Avatar. Might as well repackage Aliens and release a nice James Cameron Collection.

Where can the Excel Media DVD be bought online?

And True Lies.

Took over five years to get it, but the Chinese Excel Media is definitely anamorphic - and a very impressive dvd as well! Very good video quality and awesome DTS-ES 6.1 audio! Definitely worth it if you can track one down!

I dont know how anyone can watch the letterboxed dvds - they are equivalent to a VCD. If a Blu-ray never gets made, it's no big deal now because I'm totally happy with this DVD!

Movie: 5
DVD Video: 3.5/5
DVD Audio: 5/5
Extras: 0

Holy crap, this is an embarrassment that this movie has gone so long without a version presentable on modern screens.

How has something like this gone on this long?

This one kind of fooled me when bought it. The slip cover stated that it was anamorphic and when I played the disc on a 16:9 TV, the image covered the entire screen but it was rather pixelated.

I checked the disc in a software program and sure enough it was encoded as 4:3 but I guess either something in the authoring or something in my particular player automatically adjusted the picture to zoom giving it the appearance of being 16:9 anamorphic.

Normally a letterboxed 4:3 film will show up as letterboxed/pillarboxed on a 16:9 TV.

Were the player and tv the same brand? Back when my setup was all Sony whenever I would play a 4x3 letterbox dvd the player would automatically change the tv setting from NORMAL to ZOOM and display the picture in the correct OAR as if it was anamorphic. Yes, the player was actually able to change the picture setting of the tv. Abyss, True Lies, Broken Arrow, Escape From LA. all did it.
I'm assuming the dvds were authored with a flag to cause this since not all would do it. Since the player was set to "connected to 16:9 tv" it picked up the flag and set message to tv to change the screen setting. I caught it right away because the menu was zoomed. I could leave it as is or change tv screen setting back to NORMAL with tv remote and watch with bars on all sides.

The player was the Sony BDP-S360 on a Dynex HDTV. I haven't tried it using any other combinations but I guess the the player is programed to read a 4:3 letterbox "flag" encoded on certain discs to zoom them and give the appearance of an anamorphic encode.

Which one - the one im talking about? Because there was nothing pixilated on my screen (but maybe because my tv is in the 40 inch range). I played other letterboxed dvd versions of The Abyss on my tv which looked like an awful pixilated distorted image when it was zoomed in. If this Chinese dvd is not technically Anamorphic, I have never seen a player upconvert a letterboxed dvd to look that good, so how could that be?

I'm talking about the standard Region 1 20th Century Fox version, not the Chinese one you had bought.

When you zoom the standard 4:3 letterbox Region 1 version it does look quite pixelated on a 46" TV.

I don't know anything about the quality of the Chinese version or whther it is a legit 16:9 anamorphic transfer.

yeah, it sounded like the Region 1 dvd - unwatchable!

Definitely seek out the Chinese DVD - it's a pretty sweet dvd!