Quoting Randall_Lind:

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Is this normal some movies look like crap a.k.a Scarface for one looked washed out. However Life, Waterboy etc looked like they were in HD.

AIUI some movies upconvert better than others (I'm sure someone will be more technical) and maybe sometime the upconvert shows up any original encoding flaws. FWIW some originally SD material (like old TV) will look worse depending on settings and you will have to make setting changes to recognise such material to stop it trying to produce detail where there is none.

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Also I have a Magnavox 32 inch HDTV widescreen but only the movie life plays with no black bars on top or bottom. I thought all widescreen movies filled the whole screen if your tv was made for widescreen?

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Widescreen TVs are in a 1.78:1 ratio, if a movie is wider than that (actually most of them; some are .185:1 which is very close but often they are 2.35:1) then there will be black bars. Your TV cannot change shape to match each of the different aspect ratios that the different movies use!

Upconverting can't perform magic. If the source is in bad shape, the upconverted image will look even worse because then is when you really start to notice the flaws, especially if you have a big screen.

I was going to say to check the settings as well. On my Phillips surround sound with DVD player it has the option to change the settings from a 4:3 screen to at a 16:9 screen, which in turn will make all your dvds into widescreen and on a 32'' screen its not that bad.

I have a 32" Westinghouse and I also keep my settings on the tv in standard view mode, so it doesn't make the picture worse when trying to zoom in.

DVD player hooked up by component cables. I don't see what HD channels have to do with a upconvert DVD player but yes I have HD channels free and subscribe ones.

TV is set for 16:9 as well has the DVD Player setup. The movie LIFE says 1.85:1 anamorphic widescreen and the others are 2.35:1 just say widescreen which shows black bars top and bottom.

Do we have this issue with blu-ray?

If anamorophic means what I recall, it means that it stretches a 4:3 aspect ratio to the widescreen ratio (escapes me at the moment)

Its like... when I watch a letterbox film (movie) in say, 1:78.1  on either a non HD channel (TCM)  or a non anamorphic DVD (Vertigo) ,, the image,  is of course, black bars top and bottom., on a 4:3 TV, or like I was saying a rectangular box in the center of the 16x9 screen..
Now, when I go to 'zoom in'  to rid the bars , the image is now fully cropped and have lost a bit of information on top and bottom.,
If I use another setting like wide zoom, it now looks a bit better, but now looks squeezed and is  still not quite natural enough for my senses. 
In layman terms Anamorphic takes all the guess work out and makes the image very pleasant to look at. It unsquuezes the image . Some HD channels such as A&E HD  do 'butchery' to their wide screen films ( i.e. Godfather ) as the telecast  was  NOT anamorphic and their wide screen films looked squeezed , even though they filled the screen, and you cannot get the image to go to 'normal' (rectangular image)  only to Full, or to Zoom or to wide Zoom. The Technology isn't quite perfect for 'some ' channels but the majority of networks are.. But when A&E show a series made for TV or a special in 1:78  the look is perfect., Where A&E HD falls  down, is when they broadcast a film or a movie in letterbox and don't bother to use an anamorphic print., or don't have the technology to broadcast .,, The image looks terrible and therefore they do not get me as a viewer.. It's goodbye onto something else..
There is quite a few disgruntled Viewers who feel the same as I on this topic..

Quoting widescreenforever:

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I think and know that all Bluray widescreen -is anamorphic, and without having to state that.... in other words,, there is no 'non anamorophic'  widescreen movies on BD  or HDVD ..  .

Actually, since the native aspect ratio of Blu-ray (and HD DVD) is 16:9, there is no need for anamorphic transfers. They are all non-anamorphic fullscreen, letterbox or pillarbox (for those old 4:3 movies).