1) Although it is important, I wouldn't worry about viewable area as much as the other picture quality issues - you'll lose more due to the overscan of your ancient TV than the difference between any of the LD caps;
2) Both the TR47/Cowclops editions have PCM sound, I also remember hearing what Darth Mallwalker said about the clipping on v1 - I believe this was corrected on v2;
3) If you have a 4:3 TV, you definitely want a letterboxed transfer, not an anamorphised one - I'd still recommend the EditDroid in this category if you are in NTSC land;
4) Although bitrate is limited by the size of the media, Cowclops made the point that the source material, being soft analogue SD, is easily compressed and therefore DL media is not necessary, even if you want PCM sound. However, if you want to put together the best picture and sound on one disc from those that are already out there for 4:3 NTSC, you might look into combining the EditDroid picture with the Cowclops v2 sound, although this would probably push you into needing DL media. If you're not interested in or able to do re-authoring or DL burning, get TR47/Cowclops v1 or EditDroid for the best overall quality for your set-up (assuming you're NTSC and an OT purist).