I still have a 4:3 tv. In fact there are probably more than we think. Alough most will have a widescreen in thier living room, many will have a 4:3 tv in bedrooms, kitchens etc. Does anyone have any statistics on how many this is?
Now if ultra wide movies are shown on 4:3 tv set to letterbox, this creates a double letterbox. Half the screen is black, only a centre strip is visible. If they watch in centre cut out, they get part of the picture cut off, but the intense letterbox is reduced to a standard letterbox as if they were watching a normal broadcast in letterbox mode. If a film is cropped to 16:9, and the digibox is set to centre cut out, this could also produce undesirable results on 4:3 tvs. The ultrawide film is now cropped to 4:3, just like it used to be in the olden days of vhs (unless they bought a letterboxed copy) alough it is a center cut out, not a pan and scan, which means important info could be lost in a film if a digibox is set to center cut out.
Im wondering, when the broadcasters crop a film wider than 16:9 to 16:9, do they simply cut off the sides like a center cut out or do they pan and scan the film?
In conclusion its a tough debate. If they show the film in its original format, viewers see a smaller image and they may not like the black bands. If they crop it, they see a larger, more detailed image but may lose important information. Viewers on small screens will probably prefer the cropped version, whereas viewers on large screens will probably prefer to see all of the picture.
I wonder in which way the channel gets more complaints - viewers complaining about black bars or viewers complaining that they are missing action at the sides.
A possible compromise could be to crop it to in between 16:9 and the original aspect ratio (eg 21:9).
Or maybe as many people watch 4:3 material stretched to 16:9, they wouldnt mind it the other way around, say 21:9 squeezed to 16:9.
Or they could squeeze it a bit and crop it a bit.
Another option which they could do is show the film in its original ratio on the hd channel for hi def tvs and crop/squeeze it for standard def tvs watching the sd channel.
The broadcasters should experiment and see which method works best (ie least complaints) and stick with that.