What exactly is meant by

I think sometimes it's just a duplicate of the original. They may have to change a couple of things to make the verbage legal, "remastered". I've run into the same thing. I bought something a while back that sounded exactly like the original. I'm probably wrong about this, but it sure seems like some of these are total BS. So, ignore my venting and listen Eldartford.

The best idea is to research online before buying.

Rob

Remastering in and of itself does not necessarily mean improved sound quality. Recent examples are the Loreena McKinnet remasters. To me they lost some of their textural richness and gained IMO some artificial detail in the upper range. I realize that this is purely subjective but I prefer the orginals in this case.
All that being said though, some remasters are dramatic improvements.

Kinda like re-fried beans.

Re-Mastering is what makes some CDs released on one label seem so much better than the same songs on the original label. There are many examples. One such would be two sets of Motown recordings that happened to be given to me at the same time. There is a 4-disc set released my Gordy on Motown and another release from Rhino called 'Soul Spectacular'. The Rhino versions have relegated the Motown CDs to my car stereo. The improvement in quality is amazing. For better mixing, Rhino is always a good label as is Hear (the Starguck Coffee label) and the are also some amazing Japanese and German labels that are well worth looking for. Labels like Chesky do it right the first time.