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Originally Posted by John C. Chu
If your final destination is DVD, the DVD player will automatically squash the 16X9 video for display on 4:3 sets...giving you the "increase in vertical sharpness" you are talking about.
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Almost, but DVD players should give two options for 16x9 material on a 4:3 display. One is as above ("letterbox"), but the other fills the entire 4:3 frame of the display with the centre of the widescreen image - this is known as "centre cut". In practice letterboxing will lose resolution, not increase it - the DVD player will reduce the 576 (480 for NTSC) lines vertically down to 432 (360) - then add 144 (120) lines of black to regain the standard PAL (NTSC) signal.
Much material is now produced 16:9, but 4:3 safe - nothing vital, especially captions, graphics etc, happens outside the centre 4:3 area of the frame.