Yeah, that's always confused me, too, and, to a degree, it's happening right now in another fandom: Dragon Ball.
A lot of fans (myself included) bitched when FUNimation began releasing their DBZ boxsets cropped into 16:9. Now that Dragon Ball Kai is out and is also cropping the footage to widescreen, I've heard so many people saying, "Hah! Now all those people who complained about FUNimation are getting what they deserve!"
Ugh, people are just stupid.