And what about the vast majority of viewers, the folks who have 4:3 televisions? If they watch a fake anamorphic DVD, they're going to get a softer image that won't look as good as if it were encoded as letterboxed. As a DVD creator, an inviolable rule I have to obey is "bother the fewest." And it's always easiest to do that when you start out with the best quality encode, and that means not stretching the image and telling the encoder, "here, chew on this!" It's kind of like people who encode mono audio as 2.0. It's a waste of ever-precious bits.

Having said that, if you want to make a DVD that works best for your situation, Moth3r, then I don't think anyone would begrudge you that. Each person must make his or her own decision. But what works for you won't work for everybody else. Unless you make anamorphic and letterboxed versions for people to choose from, in which case you'll be king of the world.

This thread is going to frustrate those who are trying to learn more about this topic. Because you've got some who say "anamorphic looks better on 16:9 TVs than letterboxed," and some who say "no, letterboxed looks better." And they're both correct, because there are so many widescreen TVs out there, and they're all different, just like people's tastes are all different.

Again, the hard decision is not "should I do anamorphic?" The hard decision is "whom do I wish to please more?"