I play movies in Zoom mode. The 1.85:1 are perfect and the 2.35:1 don’t lose any edge, and you only have slight black bars at the top and bottom.
I also use the gray bars. I found it didn’t take long for black ones to burn in.
Are those of you with burned-in bars using plasma screens or not?
Yup. Had to hook up my computer to the television and run a pixel cycling program to unburn them. Worked pretty well.
LCD rear projection here. We use black bars. No burn in. (But we watch mostly widescreen stuff. Maybe 75%.)