It's true that 4:3 is also anamorphic on DVD since the 720×480 MPEG transport is a 3:2 resolution. I think it's a pretty elegant compromise halfway between 4:3 and 16:9 so both can look equally decent. A lot of DVD video has a program area of 704×480, and most DVD rippers don't differentiate so you wind up with 8px pillarbars and very slightly wrong dimensions: https://forum.videohelp.com/threads/269644-DV-to-704x480-or-...
DVD-sourced media can look great on modern displays if you…
– Encode at 720×540 slash 960×540 to avoid throwing away that extra horizontal detail, as most encoders do by crunching 4:3 video down to 640 (with pillarbars lol) × 480. Also to take advantage of integer-scaling to 1080/2160/etc which is especially beneficial on cheap TVs with crappy scalers.
— Deinterlace to double-FPS (60000/1001 fields-per-second for color NTSC) to avoid throwing away the actual benefit of interlacing in that sweet sweet motion detail. Most rippers crunch it down to 30FPS like Handbrake leads people to do.
— Convert the video to HD-standard color primitives, again to avoid cheap displays' poor treatment of SD colorspace. Chroma-subsampled video is already a little washed out by design and this can compound to make it look even worse.
DVD-sourced media can look great on modern displays if you…
– Encode at 720×540 slash 960×540 to avoid throwing away that extra horizontal detail, as most encoders do by crunching 4:3 video down to 640 (with pillarbars lol) × 480. Also to take advantage of integer-scaling to 1080/2160/etc which is especially beneficial on cheap TVs with crappy scalers.
— Deinterlace to double-FPS (60000/1001 fields-per-second for color NTSC) to avoid throwing away the actual benefit of interlacing in that sweet sweet motion detail. Most rippers crunch it down to 30FPS like Handbrake leads people to do.
— Convert the video to HD-standard color primitives, again to avoid cheap displays' poor treatment of SD colorspace. Chroma-subsampled video is already a little washed out by design and this can compound to make it look even worse.