Thankfully in the UK almost all new programming (including stuff produced in the US) is in widescreen now.

I have never seen a widescreen TV that adds grey bars when running in 4:3, that's just plain bizarre.

P.S. how can some people who have widescreens not tell when they have the apect ratio set wrong. I keep finding people who say "widescreen is crap". Then I take a look at their setup and they have:

- set their set top box or DVD player to output 4:3 instead of 16:9
- set their TV to stretch the 4:3 picture to 16:9

Mad as a box of frogs...