hi Bill,
I agree totally, I have been doing this for many years for museums and private collectors and it takes a lot of work preparing the film for scanning and a lot of work and attention to scanning it correctly and effectively "remastering" the film and preparing it for distribution or archiving. The worst advice was from someone on here telling the gent to send his films to a place like Cosco, worst possible recommendation. My work is not cheap but my most of my work is repeat business from very satisfied customers, I actually scan each frame and digitize with a large high pixel count sensor so no scan line issues or dirt build up , I also flash the film three times every frame so in effect taking three images of every frame as an HDR image and composite in After Effects, I also work with very brittle and shrunken film. I am not ILM but I am not Jed Clampert either lol

good morning Bill, I agree with you that old film should never be projected, I never recommended that to anyone, I am not sure who you directed your message to,hopefully not me. When I scan 16mm footage I use a machine without sprockets or pull down claws and the film glides effortlessly across the gate and the sprockets are located by a laser so there is minimal contact with the film. The film is captured as a sequence of high quality .tiff files and reassembled into a movie in After Effects, where the images are cleaned up and scratches and other blemishes are removed and the resulting film is stabilized for any gate movement as well as color corrected if required. This is the best way to restore film for most people. Older flying spot scanners are an older technology and rarely used today in Hollywood. There are many reasons for this but not really appropriate for this forum.

If you plan on using the digital copies in non commercial applications, there should not be a problem, I am not a lawyer so not sure about copyright law. Many old films are in the common domain.
I agree 16mm film in many ways is far superior to HD video as is regular 8 and super 8mm films if digitized correctly.

I digitize 8mm and Super 8 film for people all the time and the people are usually stunned by the quality of the video files I submit to them, the old projectors had plastic lenses and were cheaply designed and built with much of the film gate area obliterated or masked, and they usually were projected on to glass beaded screens that gave the illusion of brightness at the expense of sharpness. I digitize they film frame by frame , then stabilize the image and remove scratch marks and artifacts, I then color correct the images and add appropriate period sound tracks and the people love it, I deliver the end product on Archival quality DVD's and also present them with a higher definition (1080p) .mp4 version on USB stick that they can place in the cloud and share with their friends and family. If I can assist you , don't hesitate to get a hold of me anytime.

If the film is not to be used for commercial purposes but simply a digital conversion effort for your own use, it may be Ok, most of the films I digitize are private home movie types or old commercially produced films from companies that have not existed for many decades, and are digitized for archival use.

I would be careful about projecting older film, it can be brittle and there is usually some shrinkage in older film and sometimes the projector pull down claw does not register properly in the sprocket hole and it causes film damage and stoppages where the film will actually melt in the film gate.
I agree that DVD's are 720x480, but if film is transferred properly, DVD's can appear to be sharp and clear, any current commercial DVD of recent movies appear sharp on most TV's, its all in the compression. Also when capturing film with most 8,super8 and 16mm projectors directly to a video camera, there may be all kinds of artifacts as well as flicker and ghosting and hot spots on the captured video . It is best to have the film transferred one frame at a time and reassembled as a video file and saved in mp4 format or transferred to either DVD or Blue-Ray disk. If captured this way as sequentially numbered files, the images can be restored and all scratched and blemishes can be removed and the film stabilized and if required color corrected before creating the final product. I hope this helps, feel free to get back to me with any questions you may have. Al Cassista, acassista@comcast.net