I bought my first Laserdisc player in 1981 and quickly became a vehement advocate for original aspect ratio. I watched them on a 27" Sony Trinitron and listened to them through my own homebrew surround sound dematrixing circuit. If any visitor to my home complained about the black bars he was not invited back for a second movie.
And thus the quest began for bigger and bigger TVs so that a letterboxed image could be as big as possible!
Mark