Any advantage to capturing VHS at higher resolution?

[harpe025]

So I want to transfer the old Spidey TV show to DVD and I have all the original store bought tapes which are now out of print. I figure the tapes are over 10 years old so the quality is starting to degrade so maybe I'll transfer them to DVD. Is there any advantage to capturing at 720 X 480 like the guides suggest? I mean correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't the actual resolution less than that since it is a VHS tape? What would the benefit be? The sound I can sort of understand capturing at CD quality, even though it's mono but what should I capture the video at? Any help is appreciated.

[housepig]

lots of people will tell you not to capture at DVD resolution (720x480), because it's a waste of space and VHS resolution is not that high. They will suggest you capture in 1/2 D1 (352x480), as it will look as good at 4K bitrate as Full D1 looks at 8K bitrate.

I would suggest you take a VHS tape with a good, crisp image on it, capture an identical 30 second - 1 minute clip of it in both resolutions, put them on a dvd-rw and see how they look on your tv. You may not see a difference - I saw enough of a loss of detail and sharpness in the 1/2 D1 version that I capture everything in full D1 resolution.

but let your eyes be the judge - it'll take all of 15 minutes to get a test disc ready to view. If you don't see a significant difference, go for the 1/2 D1, you'll fit more material on a disc.