Sadly, the original WBBM source is from a transfer done on one of those VHS-to-DVD machines (not by me) and the resulting mpeg2 file was a constant moderate bit rate. I believe it was only 3.2GB in size or something along those lines. (I can't pull up the file to confirm because my drive is corrupted at the moment.) I could still output my final video at a high vbr for DVD9, though I don't know how much better it would be. What the hell, I'll do it anyway.

Upscaling to 1080i/p might be laughable. I'll see how 720 looks and decide whether HD is even worth it.