Cable/broadcast TV and "original" aspect ratios

[Caio92]

Hi there!

So, today, I was surfing the channels and I saw Spider-Man 2 on TNT. I'm used to cable and broadcast TV cropping most movies' aspect ratios, and Spider-Man 2 was being presented in 1.78:1, when its original aspect ratio is said to be 2.40:1. Out of curiosity I froze the image and took a picture with my cellphone, and popped the 2007 Blu-ray to compare and see how much of the image was being cropped.

I am a big proponent of never watching a movie that I own on Blu-ray on TV, because I want to have 100% of the original experience. But today, I was literally shocked to know that, even though I was right in my assumption that they crop the sides, but there's actually more image in the vertical ends. In the Blu-ray, you can't see the flowers in the vase (bad quality attachment, but just as reference).

I mean, what the heck? Is there some explanation to this? Does the studio distribute two different ratios? What is the actual ratio of this movie? I have a Panasonic 1080p plasma TV, all the settings are fine, and after that discovery I compared my display with the screenshots from the Blu-ray review. Everything matched, and actually, my display had maybe an inch of extra image being shown.

Thanks, everyone