The price difference is about $20. FD is one of the worst Mac OS 9 > Mac OS X ports – slow and buggy. Screenwriter doesn’t feel as bad, as FD but looks> much uglier. There is nothing 2000 about it, more like 1993. Something you’d be running on a Performa 630.
QuickTime’s just learned to recognize anamorphic flag in DVCPRO-HD 🙂 Hopefully DV and MPEG2 will follow shortly. “Normal” isn’t “True”. It is just the tag telling player at what size to play.
The only really bad thing about J-series is transport response to remote commands. It is nowhere near the DSR-1500 and in some respects worse than DSR-45. Also its error corrector is weaker than those Sony puts in the big boys like 2000-series or DVW500. But it works as advertised and will fit the role you planned for it just right.
I wouldn’t call Reisz’s book very inspirational but it is a good for historic perspective. My favorite though is The Art of the Film by Ernest Lindgren. Somehow it reads as the book on editing though it is not.