get a real HDTV with a 16:9 format and your problems will be solved.
Well, no not necessarily. Having a year and half experience with a Samsung HLN507W, 50" DLP wide screen and a Samsung DVD-HD931 upconverting DVD player, plus numerous discussions with Samsung technical support concerning the issue originally posted, I can tell you that video sent via DVI from an upconverting DVD to an HDTV is digital all the way. When playing an anamorphic wide screen DVD, the DVI digital signal also passes the control parameters to maintain the OAR. When playing a "full screen" DVD, the DVI signal transmits the movie data as uncompressed video. Thus it seeks to fill the whole screen and there aren't any black bars on the sides or top and bottom. It is sort of like watching the full-screen video in zoom mode. This result with full-screen DVDs played via DVI was the topic of numerous AVS Forum discussion threads and numerous technical support issues with Samsung. Samsung maintains that there isn't anything wrong, the system is performing as designed.
So there are DVD players that will upconvert (usually only to a DVI or HDMI output).
And there are A/V Receivers that will upconvert.
And there are TVs that will upconvert incoming signals. Which is best?
It depends on the hardware involved and your personal preference. My Samsung HDTV has an excellent upconversion process and it makes DVDs feed to it as 480i look much better than just progressive scan on an TV. It doesn't do as well with 480p input (progressive scan) because some of the upscaling, NR, and film mode electronics are bypassed with a 480p input. It still upscales the 480p the 720p HDTV, but it doesn't look quite as good as the same DVD inputted at 480i.
However, the best PQ, IMHO, is derived from using the upscaler in the DVD player. My DVD player's upscaling electronics are very similar to those of my HDTV. So it achieves a good conversion, then sends it to my DTV as a digital signal. That is, it starts digital on the DVD, gets upconverted digitally, gets transmitted digitally and interpreted and played digitally. No digital to analog conversion followed by an analog to digital conversion, which degrades the PQ.