"Pan & Scan = Bad" is not accurate. If one can do anamorphic, then fine, you may as well preserve as much of the full aspect ratio as you can, but in the non-anamorphic (mostly) world of LDs, P&S is often the best solution.

LD is a pretty low resolution format and letterboxing just wastes the little vertical resolution that we have. It would be nice to "preserve the director's intentions" and all that, but when you're pushing a 2.35:1 (say) shape peg through a 4:3 hole, something's got to give.

So, in this example, if you insist on keeping the entire width of the picture, then you can only devote 56% of the picture to the film! The rest has to be black bars. Great for captions not overlapping the picture, but otherwise, not so clever. NTSC LDs have only 425 vertical lines, so this leaves only 240 lines to get your picture in. Now we're back in VHS-land, resolution wise. It doesn't matter what size or shape your monitor device is, there are only 240 lines of non-null information stored on that disc and coming down the cable.

It's hard to tell the difference between minor characters moving about in the background, bits of text are illegible, things look generally small. Non-cinefile people coming into the room say "Why is the picture so small?". Stupid people!, the highbrows retort. But in truth, they're right - it doesn't look great.

At least P&S lets you use all the lines that the format allows. Yes, you lose the director's framing and I wouldn't advocate it for films in which that's important, but they’re not that many. This is the movies and the movies are broadly about human emotion. And human emotion is partly about being able to read faces clearly and to do that I’d rather be able to see as many wrinkles as possible and that means keeping the resolution up!

Basically, you have to make compromises and a skilled operator doing P&S is ... often, not always ... the best solution for our old non-anamorphic technology. (We can’t all have SQZ LD!)

It’s a relief that we now have higher resolution formats, anamorphic video transfers and wider-aspect TVs so that we get closer to the cinema experience and this argument goes away to a large extent, but when choosing between two LD editions of a favourite film, don’t dump the P&S just because it’s P&S!