Yeah, that's right, when tv became very popular in the fifties-sixties, cinema lost many audiences. The widescreen format was a way to gain popularity to the public, which could now see movies, news and whatever more just lying in their sofa at home. With the painful consequence that those widescreen movies appeared on screen with both left and right side cut off. Tv has been trying to compensate this with the so-called pan 'n scan and only recently by showing some movies in widescreen format.
Problem is that the audience nowadays is so used to the 3 to 4 format that some even react in a negative way when they see a movie like this. 'The image is smaller! And those black belts on top and bottom are bugging me!' So most people don't give a rat's *ss about the artistic vision of the director, and 'a widescreen tv costs more than a normal tv' and mostly they don't believe widescreen is the future and normal program will now be flatted or shown with black belts left and right and so on and so on and nag nag. Sad, isn't it?

You knew all this, but hey... It's one step closer to the four stars...
