Ancient-Red-Dragon: Nothing is more immersion-breaking in the world than seeing black bars surrounding an image, whether they be at the side and/or top and/or bottom of the screen.
Braggadar: i'd counter that argument in that if you're still seeing black bars at each side of the screen after a few minutes of gameplay the entire game has failed to draw you in. You should be invested enough into a game that you no-longer notice such things - playing it in a dark room in fullscreen should help if you're having difficulties ignoring the formatting.
...and failing that, just get a larger monitor, big enough so that the black bars are not in ones peripheral vision. It could end up being a pretty big monitor, and expensive too (depending on the span of that person's peripheral vision), but it will help remove the irritation of those black bars while playing games...
