I like the idea for a native anamorphic projector. Anybody know if they make anamorphic plasmas?
No unfortunately and we probably never will see it for two reasons.
(1) With plasmas you have to be cautious of watching too much material that does not fill up the entire screen, due to uneven aging of the phosphors. Since most folks will mostly watch 16:9 material this could present a problem. There could be stretch modes (which I cannot stand), but then most HDTV material would be stretched. There is still some older 4:3 material which would be really stretched and even the folks that don't mind stretching things now would probably object to this.
(2) Plasma sets may not be around that much longer. When folks buy TV's from big box stores they seem to be drawn to the extra brightness that LCD's give in torch mode, so plasmas just don't sell as well. Even Panasonic has recently reported losses (if I remember correctly) and they have probably the best picture quality that you can get in a TV regardless of price. But, taking price into account they are a better value that most LCD's of the same size.
Anyways, there are only two TV's that I know of that are 2.35:1, that I know of. A few years ago Phillips had an LCD TV in this ratio. I wouldn't expect a good picture out of the Phillips set. And Vizio, just recently announced one at CES. I'm not sure if it is for sale yet, but it is supposed to be LED edge lit. So the contrast ratio will be just like other LCD's (not very good) and there will probably be color uniformity issues (especially with the extra width of the display).
