What's with King Kong?

I got my XBOX 360 HD DVD add-on last week, which included the HD DVD movie King Kong. I was going to watch it last night and it seems to be in 2.35:1 format (standard DVD format with black bars above and below the picture). I had expected it to be in the standard 16:9 HD format. Is that the case with a lot of these HD DVD's that one can buy these days? If so, I'm disappointed.

Cool it guys. I know all about aspect ratio. It's just that I always thought of real HD as being made in 16:9 format and so when people talked about HD movies my first reaction was that that's how one would get them. This was the first HD DVD movie I saw for myself. I am no movie producer and I never tried to analyze the precise details of how they were produced in the studios - their format, resolution, etc.. I see 16:9 format HD movies on cable, so how was I to know what they did or did not do there. A simple statement clarifying my confusion would have been adequate. When I said that I was disappointed I simply meant that since I have a 16:9 screen I PREFER to have a picture that fills this screen. Wouldn't you?

I've been waiting for HD to develop for over 15 years. The first time that I saw an HD film was around 1990 at a SIGGRAPH conference (SIGGRAPH for those of you who don't know is the special interest group in graphics of the Association for Computing Machinery). I was blown away with the picture then, but unfortunately it took forever to get to where it is now. It is the high resolution of the picture that makes it great and not the relative dimensions of my 100" screen. (On the other hand, it would be nice if all pictures had the same aspect ratio format so that there would be no need for black bars.) I'm enjoying all the high definition material that I can get. In fact, I bought a Sony hi def camcorder last year so that I can film my travels in high def 16:9 format.