If the effect of making a movie that's best viewed in 16:9 mode appears as 4:3 when you turn off the letterbox mode, "cropped" looks the same as "panned and scanned" to me. :)
I didn't say they did, and I have a lot of movies in 16:9 widescreen format too. But I know people who don't like the black bars at the top & bottom of their screen. People like that are satisfied with 80% of the whole picture. I tell them that even if they buy the widescreen format of a film...
High-definition re-release of Buffy? No....I believe this complete series set will be the last to come out on any form of DVD. 20 Century Fox has milked Buffy for all it's worth...except for the spinoff. Now they have to put ANGEL out in a 5 season box in the same standard definition DVD...
I'm glad I got mine in November from DDD for $139 (first time I ever ordered from them), and I finished re-watching the majority of these and all the extras on New Year's Day. So I'm done with the set for a long time to come. It doesn't bother me that there is no limited collector's edition...