I've been seeing a lot more letterboxed programming on PBS lately, and
just put it up to the transition to HDTV. But then I realized
something. One particular program was about World War 2, and
consisted almost entirely of newsreel footage, and another was about
Charles and Diana's wedding, and again was almost entirely video and
film news footage.

Does anyone see a serious problem here? None of that footage could
possibly have been shot in widescreen, so why am I sitting here
watching 4:3 footage letterboxed on my 4:3 set? Wasn't the point of
letterboxing that we could see movies as they were originally intended
to be seen? The WW2 program had serious composition problems with
heads masked off and generally a crowded look to it. Although the
subject matter held my interest, the program was clearly hurt visually
by this.

I suppose that you could claim that it's possible to extract HD
quality out of grainy WW2 newsreel footage, (It's 35mm, right?) but
the Charles and Di program was mostly analog Pal video from the
eighties. Do we really need to be cropping that down and lowering
it's resolution any more then we need to? Even on NTSC, it looked
worse then similar footage I'd seen elsewhere.

Even if I had a wide HD set, I think I'd rather see these programs in
the correct aspect ratio, even if it meant bars on the sides of the
set. This applies particularly to the Charles and Di video, because
reducing the image would improve it's perceived resolution.

Oh by the way, I've also seen two stores promoting the widescreen DVD
of "The Wizard of Oz"! And both stores were showing it letterboxed on
cheap 13" sets! AAAAAARG!