I have a widescreen TV and will always watch a presentation in its original aspect ratio, so I don't mind watching a 4:3 presentation even if it means having gaps at the sides. Also if I watch something on my PC (4:3 monitor) I will watch it in its original aspect, so I would watch a 16:9 or even 2.35:1 ratio picture even if it meant having black gaps at the top and bottom.

It seems most of my family are content to watch 4:3 presentations stretched to fit 16:9, making them almost twice as wide as they should be, but I cannot stand to watch anything like that.

One thing that does annoy me is DVD's that use letterbox instead of anamorphic widescreen, so not only does a DVD player not pick this up and you have to change it manually but it is wasting image in which your image could be stored and thus be higher quality.

I know true widescreen is 1.77:1 and TV's are 1.85:1 so there is some clipping which occurs but that is done by the production company and is usually explained on the case of DVDs at least (it generally says enhanced for widescreen televisions)

I am content to watch anything in the ratio it was made. Hitchcock made all of his movies at full frame 4:3 I think and thus I would watch them that way. If a movie was made at 2.40:1 I'd watch it at that too as pan&scan on DVD players simply crops the image to the center, and as such you may lose a lot of image, more importantly you may lose more valuable parts of the image then a professionally pan&scanned copy.