restoring 15 year old video

[sinnistar]

I'm re-editing all my 15 year old videos which were shot with a sony hd and saved in a m2v video with separate audio files.
I'm using pinnacle 26 to edit because they were created using pinnacle 12 and I'm able to use the saved pinnacle files, saving much time.
I first want to decide how to render the new vids. They were saved in 1440x1080 m2v and 15 years ago I created a decent 1080x720 h264 mp4 file which has held up well over the years with very few consumer issues. The porn thieves especially liked them.
I want to upgrade to keep the video 1440x1080 or upscale to 1920x1080.
I've created 4 short clips in 1440 and 1920 using both pinnacle and handbrake. In the case of handbrake I create a file in pinnacle that closely matches the original content and then run through handbrake to make it mp4, h264 and all files are set at 5000mbps vbr.
Which one is best to use?
Is 5 mbps high enough?
https://sinnistar.com/pinnacle-1920-1080-5k.mp4
https://sinnistar.com/pinnacle-1440-1080-5k.mp4
https://sinnistar.com/handbrake-1920-1080-5k-web-optimized.mp4
https://sinnistar.com/handbrake-1440-1080-5k-web-optimized.mp4

[zing269]

Personally I thought the handbrake-1440 was best, followed by handbrake-1920, then pinnacle-1440, and finally pinnacle-1920.

[sinnistar]

Personally I thought the handbrake-1440 was best, followed by handbrake-1920, then pinnacle-1440, and finally pinnacle-1920.

that would make sense because handbrake does a better job rendering and 1440 is the same as the original content.