Thanks for your detailed answer. Here's my thing (to quote a character in another Ten Thirteen show), Criterion is far from flawless in some of their decisions (for example: the selection of films they choose to release in their collection could use a major major shake-up- although I gotta admit I'm grateful they only release one or two titles I want every year cause they're so expensive...). ANYWAY aside from any flaws in their selection process, they are respected as film restorers because they would NEVER, EVER (nor would any other legit film restoration project) change an aspect ratio for commercial reasons, in fact it is extremely rare that they would ever alter any aspect ratio at all for any reason (some other film companies do- in minor ways- but they don't, UNLESS THE ORIGINAL ARTIST INSISTS ON IT). They are not in the business of trying to make older films look artificially like they were produced today, they are in the business of RESTORING older films. Changing aspect ratios is similar to colorizing a black and white film, or turning a color film to black and white. Such things are NOT done by film restoration teams unless there are some very extreme circumstances, like maybe, let's say, somehow the only version of a 16:9 film that survived intact was a version that had been cut to 4:3 ratio to air on TV. And let's say, there WAS a print of the film in 16:9 but it was missing over half the film, only the TV version in 4:3 was preserved in its entirety. In that situation, they might decide to go through and try to replace all the parts of the 4:3 TV aired version they could replace, with the 16:9 film version in higher quality. But in order to prevent the film switching aspect ratios in every scene, they would first want to crop the aspect ratio of the 16:9 to 4:3 to match the TV version. In this situation, cropping the aspect ratio would be absolutely necessitated by the constraints of not having the full film available in its original ratio of 16:9. But that's just an extreme hypothetical situation I doubt Criterion has even encountered. If a full film (or TV show) is available in its original aspect ratio, there is NO excuse EVER from any standpoint other than MAKING MORE MONEY to chop it to a different ratio. And not only Criterion, but most regular film distrubutors will never do that. Casablanca is not exactly my favorite movie, but it's widely known (and not exactly terrible) so let's use that as an example- it is in "Academy Ratio" which is about 4:3 (almost all American movies of the 1920s-1940s are in that ratio, except for Gone With the Wind and one or two other huge epics). If you look at the available DVDs and Blurays, all of them are in 4:3, the original ratio. Releasing always in original ratio is considered, even by big film companies (Casablanca is not released on the Criterion label- it is a Warner release) the appropriate way to do video releases, even if you may see it cropped on a TV channel. Physical releases are aimed at actual fans of the movie and those people are interested in having it intact, not chopped to fit a trend. TCM did help set a precedent in the '90s, that when the DVD format came along, it would serve the interests of preserving movies as they were meant to be seen but in the highest possible (at that time) resolution. Many Bluray producers have abandoned that progressive view of film restoration, instead, they are not interested in letting each film be its own thing it was meant to be, and they are instead changing it purely so it looks like whatever is profitable in the industry right now. If there is anyone left to look back, people will look back at this kind of "restoration" as an atrocity. In the future, there will have to be yet another restoration to save all these cropped works in their original versions.