How acceptable is letterbox for viewing widescreen pictures?

Letterbox is under consideration in both Europe and Japan as a standard means of providing a compatible widescreen image on a 4*3 television. Some TV broadcasters in North America fear they will lose audiences if they broadcast programs in a letterbox format; those fears were borne out in studies of consumer reaction to letterbox. In addition to the research, television experience in both France and the USA confirmed that some viewers do object to program material shown in letterbox format, either calling the station or switching channels. Although several studies in the USA and Canada demonstrated the possibility of high initial resistance to a letterbox form of a compatible image, similar studies in Japan, however, showed that a letterbox compatible image was clearly preferred to a 4*3, cropped, image.<>