Anamorphic pixel size

I appreciate what they are before the are horizontally squashed, but what about the size they are AFTER they have been resolved to 16:9?
Surely, in QT using the conform aperture functin I'm stretching out whatever info I have a degrading the picture? 720 > 1024 is quite a significant stretch!

Any picture that is shot on PAL for widescreen has to be anamorphic to fit in with the tape and TV systems. But all of them (I think maybe apart from a few Sony high end cameras) record onto a 4:3 chip and only expose the 16:9 portion but then stretch out to fill the whole frame electronically, thereby loosing definition.

When resolved down again to 16:9, this must have an aspect ratio that MUST be 720 on the horizontal and therefore I say must also follow to be 405 (404 or 406 depending how you do your sums)Anyone have any stats on how widescreen TV's display this stuff and how many pixels are used if displaying 1 for 1?

Here's the results from some tests in FCP:

Using photoshop docs here's what I get in a DV50 PAL Widescreen project

1024 x 576 Sq px - Puts black bars top and bottom about 10 pixels each (scale 93 -ASPECT 33)

1024 x 576 NON Sq px - Puts black bars top and bottom about 10 pixels each (scale 93 -ASPECT 33)

720 x 405 Sq px - Puts black bars top and bottom about 10 pixels each (scale 133 -ASPECT 33)

720 x 405 NON Sq px - Puts black bars top and bottom about 10 pixels each (scale 133 -ASPECT 33)

720 X 576 anamorphic PX - Fits the frame exactly (Scale 0 - Aspect 0)

720 x 576 Px - Has bars left and right of the frame (Scale 0 - Apsect 33)

At 100% the window in FCP measures 1024 x 576 in that sequence setting as mentioned.

Any ideas what is actually correct here, apart from the anamorphic 4:3 which I know is perfectly correct>?

Any takers?

I'm having some real problems with getting an answer from anyone in the know about this. 1024 x 576 is not a frame size that really means anything in terms of PAL TV systems, it just appears that QT seems to make it that size when playing back anamorphic material.

This is borne out when you put both a 1024 x 576 and a 720 x 405 graphic in a 720 x 576 anamorphic project. They are both dealt with the same way (albeit coming in slightly ltterboxed top and bottom as mentioned above) and I can't see any degradation in picture quality on the smaller one given that the canvas at 100% is 1024 x 576, again I don't know why this is when given what we know about PAL it should be 720 x 405.

If anyone knows who I may be able to contact and get an answer I'd love it.