Anamorphic for optimal TV playback?

[essentialjpm]

I've read a ton on encoding lately, I'm going to start converting my entire DVD collection very soon and I don't want to start off wrong. I have my final settings based on a lot of reading, but I still have an anamorphic question. I've done test encodes with loose and strict, and from everything I've read strict seems to be the way to go, but I'm wondering if either is better/smoother for playback on a TV? Most opinions I read seemed to be referencing computer playback, I'm going to network everything I rip through a NMT to my 1080p TV.

I'm using Handbrake primarily for SD content, I use Ripbot for BluRays.

Secondary question, on my test rip, I was doing an episode of a TV show from a boxset I own. The episode is 720x480, but handbrake automatically crops it down to 718x480 because there is a single black line on the left side that can be seen on the source. Does cropping this out at all effect playback on a TV (should I crop manually and leave everything 0 to really maintain the original resolution)? I don't want anything to even seem slightly stretched.

Thanks.