Since 16:9 isn't supported by 1/2-D1-resolution it wouldn't be nice to encode my 16:9 movies as letterboxed in that resolution. The picture would get very un-sharp when I watch it zoomed on my widescreen-tv.

I thought, if I could encode my widescreen movies as letterbox in 720x576 , instead of 352x576 anamorphic, I could almost use the same low bitrate as for 1/2-D1-resolution because of the lower picture-area.

Then I could just zoom it (= crop the black bars) on my widescreen TV with the same sharp picture as an anamorphic 1/2-D1.

I'm a newbie on this video-encoding stuff so tell me if I'm completely wrong.