Studio HD production with digibeta cameras?

My company is looking into shooting a project on High-Def and the producer is hot to do HD, but probably isn't considering the increased resolution of the cameras that might make the audience members look not-quite-so attractive. Anyway, one thought I had was using digibeta cameras and then running that video feed into an HD deck (this will be a live switched program). Would that be an acceptable way to tone down the resolution a bit (yes, I realize it kind of destroys the point of shooting on HD...) but still maintain the HD quality. Or would it make more sense to shoot 16x9 digibeta and just upconvert the master program?

Just wondering if anyone has tried either and what their feelings on the matter might be.

Eli