The process repeats. Unless you know what's going on in advance, it's difficult to figure out what he's doing, and it's disorienting either way. The result is ridiculously shoddy. The versions that don't make even this concession suffer from some unacceptable anomalies. For example, throughout the race, the camera periodically cuts to a board which keeps track of the lap count.
Some movies suffer less than others.
Stanley Kubrick's later films were shot specifically so they would look good either on a television screen or on a wider theater screen. Unfortunately, the degree of damage done when a widescreen movie is cropped to fit a television screen is usually greater, and, I would argue, significant even in these cases. Do everything you can to support letterboxing. Buy letterboxed video tapes or DVDs. First do a search on the movie in question.