I think it also depends on the movie, and how it came. Some movies will always have the letterbox bars as part of the picture, because they were filmed on a different aspect ratio than the tv (doesn't matter if it's widescreen or not). 2001: a space odyssey is an example. It was filmed in the 60's for cinema screens which are much wider than a standard tv, and even a new widescreen tv. There is no way to watch the entire picture without having black bars. You can zoom in, but that might sacrifice things on the edges. A lot of movies are formatted like this (example was on dvds that were either widescreen or fullscreen). you can either have the entire picture with black bars, or a portion of the picture but bigger on a horizontal basis.
