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i bought a Toshibe DLP 52" about a year ago, and when i popped in my first "widescreen" movie, was wondering the same things as you about the blackbars.. here is what i have learned over the year about widescreen TVs:
1) "widescreen" is in a 16:9 format, which does not fill your whole screen.. there will be black bars... some widescreen formats have even bigger blackbards, it just depends on how the director shot the film.
what you should look for is movies that have been adjusted to fit the entire screen (without any zoom functions set). this is call anamorphic (it will say that on the back of the DVD). Some DVD's come out in the theater presentation of "widescreen", while other DVD's will come out in anamorphic (pan/scan to fit).
I like the anamorphic versions because it does make the picture look better. You might lose a little bit of detail that the widescreen captured.. but it really is insignificant.. but you do see more in widescreen format than in the 4:3 pan/scan formatting (ie. full screen).
2) HDTV fills the whole screen, and looks absolutely amazing.. the extra $5 or $10 a month to get the few HD channels there is, is really worth it.. especially when combined with a HD DVR.
Watching "normal" broadcasts at 4:3 looks awe when you make it stretch, and the pciture quality is worse than on my 27" Sony.
The picture tubes make up for the poorer quality signals of cable. The larger screen format exaggerates it and i refuse to watch any TV that isn't in HD anymore, or I go into the bedroom to watch the 27".
Fight the videophiles!
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