Thats how my roommate watches TV on my wide screen, it bugs the shit out of me. I'm like "doesn't it bother you that people all look fat and everything looks stupid?", and he just says he can't stand the black bars on the side. Of course he can also watch full-screen movies so I guess some people are just hopeless.
I love it when people talk about "black bars", its never "the picture's too" small or anything, its always just those stupid black bars.
Years ago when I worked at a store that sold videos, it came up all the time. I explained to people how its actually full screen that has vertical "black bars", -the sides of the TV screen cutting off half the picture. And in most cases, you still got warped images and hokey smooth camera pans.
Then when widescreen TVs started to come out and were ridiculously overpriced, I'd warn those I could. But one day a lady came in bragging how a salesman at a local electroniccs chain just sold her a $3000 - $4000 widescreen TV. And how he told her that its the only way to get rid of the black bars.
I didn't have the heart to tell her than she could've bought a larger 4:3 TV that would've had at least the same size letterboxed viewing area as the widescreen's screen, but for a good $1000 less and wouldn't warp TV shows, -what most people watched on TVs at the time.