Baronlando is right, the early adopters were in large part to thank for letterboxed laserdiscs. And it wasn't just old ladies and soccer moms that preferred pan&scan- I remember listening to Howard Stern about 15 years ago, and he was talking about how he'd bought a bunch of laserdiscs and was going to return them to the store because he hated the 'black bars' lol.

Negative1, are you familiar with the Home Theater Forum?

http://www.hometheaterforum.com/htf/sd-dvd-film-documentary/

Movie lovers and videophiles discuss various aspects of home theater there, including software, and most of the major motion picture studios get ideas of which unreleased or OOP films are in demand, and they even have chats from time to time with the HTF members, to get information of what home theater enthusiasts would like to see.

Producing DVDs costs a lot of money- it's a gamble, and they won't release a particular title unless they know there's a market for it.

Also, many defective DVDs and blu-rays have been recalled and reissued because of complaints from HTF members.

I believe it was The Black Pearl blu-ray that was mis-framed, and because people on the HTF site and other sites complained, the disc was corrected and there was a replacement program instituted.

I guarantee that if people had not complained, Disney would not have volunteered the information about the discs because it cost them money to replace them.

That is only one example, but it has happened countless times, including with the Back to the Future series which was also misframed, and the most recent release of Superman: The Movie because it lacked the original theatrical soundtrack.

Negative1 said:

so essentially you CAN upgrade your old versions from DVD -> HD ..

I really wish that was true, but according to the experts on this site and many others, you cannot create detail where there is none. I'm sure there are ways of making the GOUT look better, but it is never going to be hi-def resolution because the lines of resolution are just not there.