DVD: anamorphic, why?

[me7]

I was wondering why the industry agreed on a 720x576 (or 720x480) resolution for both, 4:3 and 16:9 in the first place. Wouldn't it be simpler to just include two seperate modes in the spcification like 768x576 for 4:3 and 1024x576 for 16:9?
And doesn't the 16:11 pixel aspec ratio lead to more ugly horizontal aliasing when viewed on a high res screen like a PC monitor?

[LoRd_MuldeR]

PAL and NTSC are defined as 720x576 and 720x480 for historical reasons. It dates back to a time, long before the Video-DVD was invented ;)

As you can check easily, 720x576 and 720x480 are neither 4:3 nor 16:9. So 4:3 as well as 16:9 footage unavoidably needs to be encoded anamorphic.
With the new "HD" resolutions of 1920x1080 and 1280x720 this is no longer the case. These are "native" 16:9 resolutions...

[teedoubleyou]

You'll also notice that in fact 16:9 is designed at 1024x576... which is a ratio of 16 to 9. So really it is 1024, as when you design menus you do them at 1024, re-size 'em to 720. The player then stretches them back out to 1024 for correct display..

[frank]

There are technical reasons! Sample rates, clocks, TV systems...
Read carefully
A Quick Guide to Digital Video Resolution and Aspect Ratio Conversions (http://lipas.uwasa.fi/~f76998/video/conversion)
and you will understand.