In the linked forum thread, someone asked whether there were even widescreen standard-def CRTs around at the time.
The answer is yes, but they were fairly uncommon. Most of these games were produced around the same time that DVDs were new to the scene. One of the "killer features" of DVDs was widescreen content and much-better-than-VHS picture quality, finally allowing the average person to get something very close to the movie theater experience in their own home. If they had a large high-end widescreen TV, that is...
The "widescreen" TVs at the time were mostly projection TVs (which did use a CRT tube, but were not usually referred to as CRT TVs) and plasma TVs. Plasma displays were somewhat popular for a fairly short period between the dominance of CRT and LCD TVs. But they were fairly expensive, so the vast majority of households simply went directly from 4:3 CRTs to widescreen LCDs once the prices on the latter dropped dramatically.
The companies releasing DVD movies typically either sold a particular movie in separate "standard" or "widescreen" editions, or bundled them both into the same box/disc because it was clear to _them_ that widescreen in the home was the future. And it was easy: pretty much every film was widescreen already. However, video game makers were targeting the existing market which was mainly 4:3 CRT TVs and designing a game for both aspect ratios was usually not trivial. Hence why there were not many games that supported it. It was just a nice bonus for trade show booths and rich kids.
I don't think many game devs thought that their creations would live on. Most probably figured their games would be off store shelves in a year or two and completely irrelevant in three to four. So it makes sense they would not have planned for the future.
I'm sure no one, but a few prescient individuals, ever considered retro gaming/emulation would be a huge thing in 30 years. Even I can't believe it when I see seven year olds wanting to play SNES games.
The film industry had been around long enough by the 90s to have realized that there will be a market for classic movies and that it behooved the industry to future-proof when possible, especially for blockbuster films.
We had a Sony Wega TV CRT that had a special "16:9 Enhanced" anamorphic mode that basically narrowed the vertical scan area of the electron gun while keeping the same number of lines. For a while you could find specially mastered DVDs that digitized the source material at a higher than normal vertical resolution. If you played them on a normal TV, everything would appear vertically stretched. If you played them on the Wega (or other similar TVs? Were there others?), then the picture would be scaled down correctly and would appear super sharp and bright.
That just seems like normal anamorphic mode but I guess built into the TV? DVD players would do it for you too so long as you set the aspect ratio in settings to match your TV. Otherwise an anamorphic wide-screen DVD would be basically unwatchable on 4:3. DVDs were often released as Full Screen (4:3) or wide-screen editions which were typically anamorphic unless it was poorly done.
The answer is yes, but they were fairly uncommon. Most of these games were produced around the same time that DVDs were new to the scene. One of the "killer features" of DVDs was widescreen content and much-better-than-VHS picture quality, finally allowing the average person to get something very close to the movie theater experience in their own home. If they had a large high-end widescreen TV, that is...
The "widescreen" TVs at the time were mostly projection TVs (which did use a CRT tube, but were not usually referred to as CRT TVs) and plasma TVs. Plasma displays were somewhat popular for a fairly short period between the dominance of CRT and LCD TVs. But they were fairly expensive, so the vast majority of households simply went directly from 4:3 CRTs to widescreen LCDs once the prices on the latter dropped dramatically.
The companies releasing DVD movies typically either sold a particular movie in separate "standard" or "widescreen" editions, or bundled them both into the same box/disc because it was clear to _them_ that widescreen in the home was the future. And it was easy: pretty much every film was widescreen already. However, video game makers were targeting the existing market which was mainly 4:3 CRT TVs and designing a game for both aspect ratios was usually not trivial. Hence why there were not many games that supported it. It was just a nice bonus for trade show booths and rich kids.