Gaffer Tape said:
Whaaaa? The "black bars" are there to keep you from losing image information...
He means image *resolution*. He's right - as we know with the GOUT, a lot of vertical resolution and image detail is lost in 4:3 letterbox. I loathe pan and scan, but even I can admit this shortcoming.
In fact, I calculated it, and only with the advent of HD does letterboxed 2.35:1 finally surpass the vertical resolution of pan-and-scan 480i.
Even though these versions are butchered, they still need to be preserved for the sake of posterity. The P&S transfers, and specifically the PAL versions, probably have the most detailed starfields of any version (though Harmy has gotten an impressive amount of starfield detail out of the crushed Blu-ray transfers).
And finally, someone who notices that modern Blu-ray transfers often lose that hard-light/high-contrast look of 70s/80s film. (Though the old P&S transfers of the SW trilogy also have an overly bright, flat-contrast look at times...but of a different kind than modern Blu-ray transfers.)