An alternate take is: since the future can be assumed to be increasingly digital, and analogue displays often have aspect ratio issues in their own right, why not just pretend 720x480 is 16x9? Digital systems will do this anyway, and analogue systems may end up with a stretched, cropped image, but with their aspect ratio issues and overscan, they may have ended up stretched and cropped regardless of how correct the source image was.

Or, "How I Learned to Stop Worrying And Love Doing It Wrong Just Like Hollywood"...