I always wondered how most countries still keep analogue in cable (Finland is now exclusively DVB, even in cable): you would expect the cable operators to jump up in joy if they could replace each analogue channel with half a dozen crappy digital pay-TV channels with pirate-proof encryption But I suppose it is a political thing...
Actually it would be possible to get full resolution 16:9 in analogue regular PAL as well, just send it in anamorphic form - aspect ratio signalling has been standardized for a long time now, and I think most later 4:3 sets (and probably all 16:9 sets?) support it. The problem is those old sets that do not (and even newer sets in case of B&O - my MX6000 from 1997 can't even switch to 16:9 at all, something that most any Kikinoko TV from the mid-90s on could!).
I agree that watching a letterboxed wide-screen program on a 16:9 set is a terrible loss. On a 4:3 as well of course, but the problem isn't quite so apparent since the "resolution per surface area" is still the same as on a pure 4:3 transmission. PALplus is rather difficult to decode, though - I would expect the required processing power and cost be more than a DVB set top box has.
I bought an STB in 2003, and simply removed the RF cable from my TV. Some channels with too low bandwidth allocation have enough compression artifacts to be annoying, but still I haven't missed the noise, cross-colour problems and signal reflections of analogue TV a bit...