The whole point of widescreen is to have more viewing area because human eyes can see wider than they can see taller =p It's actually human psychology/biology at work here humans are more comfortable with looking at rectangles than squares (golden ratio or someshiz). Also it's not the governments who dictate it, it's the manufacturers who probably saw sales of 4:3s decline since the introduction of 16:10s to the point of non-profitability and gradually phased them out
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4:3 monitors should still be available (heck, I use two of them at work) but TVs in that aspect ratio are going to be hard to come by, especially if you want an HDTV. AFAIK the WXGA standards for HDTVs basically exclude 4:3 resolutions.
And yeah, one of the drawbacks of having a widescreen HDTV is that a lot of content isn't designed (or wasn't released) to be displayed at widescreen resolutions. There are DVD players that will upscale the content for you but it's not going to solve the aspect ratio problem.
I don't mind the two bars too much though - it's preferable to a stretched, blurry image.
If you want the ability to switch between 4:3 and 16:9/16:10 resolutions on a single device maybe you should look into getting a projector of some kind.
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And yeah, one of the drawbacks of having a widescreen HDTV is that a lot of content isn't designed (or wasn't released) to be displayed at widescreen resolutions. There are DVD players that will upscale the content for you but it's not going to solve the aspect ratio problem.
I don't mind the two bars too much though - it's preferable to a stretched, blurry image.
If you want the ability to switch between 4:3 and 16:9/16:10 resolutions on a single device maybe you should look into getting a projector of some kind.
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