[MPlayer-users] How to encode mpegs for 16:9 (wide screen) DVDs?

[VJ]

Hi
 I capture videos from my TV cable using PVR350 (get MPEG2 from it) at
9000kbps and then encode the files to DVD compliant files using
mencoder. Some of my programs are available in letter-boxed format
because they are recorded for wide-screen. Currently I am encoding the
whole frames (thus keeping frames at 720x576).
My question is 
Is there are special way to encode for wide screen? My programs after
clipping are limited to 688x400 only (out of 720x576). Now I am using
the following filter chain to get maximum speed

-vf crop=688:400,hqdn3d,expand=720:576

The main reason of my question is to remove as much black bars (top
and bottom) as possible to save some bits (and bytes).

Regards from
VJ