anamorphic encoding question

[graysky]

I have a 720x480 DVD source using 4:3 DAR and 4:3 SAR. I'll be cropping out only to remove some poor quality lines at the edges vertically and have used overcropping to a mod16 res. and using anamorphic signaling in the past.

Here's what I'm looking at with this particular case:

720x480 --> 688x480 (yeah there is quite a bit of vertical bars and just poor quality edges.)

With the 4:3 anamorphic signaling, the player will actually be down sizing to the 688x480 to 640x480. Am I better off just doing a resize to 640x480 and switching off clever anamorphic encoding altogether? Why encode more pixels if the end result will be less than when I'm storing?

Thanks for the opinions.

[graysky]

Update: guess I never had an example w/ a 4:3 PAR before. I did a small test encode and found that mplayer prescales the vertical by 1.333 which went from 688x480 --> 688x516.