Generally, most of my DD preorders have shipped on release day, and I would receive them by the end of the same week.
However, my CC was charged today for my order, so it may be sooner.
They also rarely (if ever) send out shipping notices. I just check the website daily to see if a tracking...
The Blu-Ray standard is a 16x9 image. To display 4x3 content, there would need to be some blockage of the image. Now conceivably, the blockage could be side bars of another color (Disney used to do this). Or the image could be unbalanced - content just on one side, with a bar on the other...