That's one reason and I see your point. What are all the others? Cost of the lens or a video processor doesn't count seeing how we are talking about enjoyment and not money.
I don't see any bars on the sides when watching formats other than 2.35 unless the lights are on. If the lights are on, I don't care about image quality anyway.
IMO cost does count toward enjoyment since I’m not independently wealthy anything I buy is a trade-off for something else I now can’t afford that might also be equally enjoyable but in a different way. For example I seriously considered your recommendations of the JVC projectors and will eventually upgrade to something in that range, but at a minimum one would have cost me $2,500 more which was the budget for my curtains in that round of buying. Since I won’t be upgrading the curtains any time soon and already knew their benefit in my situation I figured this being my first projector I would be sufficiently blown away that a lesser model would offer more utility value.
I imagine most people have to make the same trade-offs as I did meaning they are not likely using a lens or video processor. I can’t speak to everyone’s constraints but it just so happened that the widest screen I could fit would also accommodate the corresponding height for a 1.78:1 screen. So why would I sacrifice my 1.33:1 (about 25+% of my viewing) and 1.78:1 (about 70+% of my viewing) size to use a 2.35:1 screen. Also, since most of what I watch is in a 1.78:1 or similar ratio it made sense intuitively to buy the screen that was in both that ratio which is also the native ratio of the projector rather than adding more processing steps to the image (lens and scaling).
IMO (I understand not all people will share it) 1.78:1 creates a more natural view. The area it covers is just as wide as a 2.35:1 image but being higher also covers more of the area I can naturally focus on w/o going to far off into my peripheral vision. So even if I could afford a lens and video processor I wouldn’t want to use one to get a 2.35:1 ratio since I prefer a 1.78:1 picture.
Finally, if for some reason I later want to change my screen to 2.35:1 exclusively I can always mask it down. To go the other way I would have to buy another screen. While I can see some reasons why a person might prefer a 2.35:1 screen I imagine they don’t apply to most people and though I’m to lazy to research it right now I’d be surprised if 2.35:1 is the most popular screen ratio
