There are 4 pictures towards the bottom of the page. All four were captured using IRE7.5 which is what I should have used on my DVD's and will use when I recapture them and create new ones. Two of the pictures had the TMPNGEnc Plus option, Output YUV data as Basic YCbCr instead CCIR601, turned on and the other two had it turned off. I think the ones with that option turned off look better because more stars are visible. These captures were made using composite cables. I used S-Video cable for mine and think the composite ones look better. S-Video is a better standard, but LD is stored in a composite data format, so there is nothing to gain by using S-Video.
Now back to 16:9 enhancement. If you look at the pictures on that link, I think the 16:9 pictures look just as good as the 4:3 ones. You may not gain detail by going 16:9, but it keeps you from having to use the zoom on a 16:9 TV. It also doesn't matter whether you have a 16:9 TV now or not because you probably will within the next 5 years or so. If you play a 16:9 movie on a 4:3 set, it will look correct as long as your DVD Player is set to 4:3 mode. The reason for this is that there is a flag in the MPEG-2 stream that tells the player how to display the video. The player looks at the flag and compares it to the mode it is set to. If it is set to 16:9, it will display it that way. Ultimately, the player's mode setting will determine how it is displayed. Obviously, if you have a 16:9 TV, the player should be set to 16:9 mode.
I didn't having a problem with cropping when I made my DVD's. The only thing I cropped were the black bars on the top and bottom. This has to be done or your image will have black bars on all 4 sides. When I did this, new pure black bars were generated on the top and bottom that looked better than the black bars the LD had. I sometimes could see analog noise in the original black bars, but that is not present in the new bars. I did crop the subtitles out, but it was a very simple process for me to recreate new subtitles which look better than the ones in the bottom black bar. It was a simple process to create new subtitles. I was able to time them perfectly with the original ones because the cropping of the black bars doesn't occur until the encoding stage. The subtitles were created during the editing stage using Sub Station Alpha (SSA for short). The subtitle script was imported into virtual dub as a filter, so I was able to view the original subtitles the same time as mine and was able to adjust the timing until both match. If the timing didn't match, I would change my script in SSA, save it again, reload the filter and script into Virtual Dub, and compare both mine and the LD subtitles until the timing matched perfectly. It was a little time-consuming, but didn't take me more than a few hours. Jedi even took less time even though it had more subtitles because I knew exactly what I was doing by then.
Many may disagree with me on this, but I believe the subtitles for Star Wars look better in the video image instead of the black bars because that is where they were in the theater since there are no black bars there. I really hate the subtitles for Phantom Menace because they have a fade effect which was not present in the theater. I also like yellow subtitles more than white.
To sum everything up. It is easy to convert to 16:9 without losing the original aspect ratio of the image. There is even a setting I used in TMPNGEnc on my encodes called Video Arrange Method which has several choices. I used Full Screen (Keep Aspect Ratio). The new black bars are going to be better than the original ones because they will be pure black and you won't see any analog noise in them like you might if you use the LD bars. Lastly, it is my opinion that the subtitles are better in the video image than in the black bar because that is where they would be if you see the film in the theater. Making subtitles is a little time-consuming, but it is not hard to do.
I'm going by my opinion on this, but I believe it is best to convert any widescreen 4:3 source to 16:9. I don't believe the same to be true if it is a 4:3 full screen source, because there are no black bars to crop. You will just be cropping the image itself. If you don't crop anything, you may get an image that is stretched out of proportion or will have black bars on all 4 sides. If you zoom in on that image to fill a 16:9 TV, it will be stretched out of proportion. If I don't crop the black bars when I convert 4:3 widescreen to 16:9 widescreen, I will get black bars on all 4 sides. Those are the reasons why I crop the black bars. The extras feature both full screen and widescreen. That is also the reason I left the extras disc I created in 4:3 instead of converting it to 16:9.
I'm sure you can easily achieve 16:9 with just about any encoder. I choose TMPNGEnc Plus because it is very powerful and only costs $50.00 U.S. It is very slow compared to some of the other encoders, but I let it do my encoding overnight when I'm not using my PC. I'm sure the Cinema Craft and Main Concept Encoders can do the same and they are faster than TMPNGEnc Plus, but they are more expensive. The pro version of Cimena Craft Encoder is $2000.00 U.S. and Main Concept is $150.00 U.S.
Again, I apologize for all of the techno babble, but I figured I would explain why I prefer to encode in 16:9 and how easy it is.
Patrick