This example comes from a classic Jackie Chan film "Wheels on Meals." You can see from the chopped image that the subtitles just don't even make sense, albeit funny, in the scene. Fortunalty, most widescreen TV's have adjustments to view this movies subtitles properly.

The first image shown is how the movie would look on a standard (4:3) TV. The second image is how it would look with a Zoom Mode turned on. This usually zooms in to a 1.78:1 ratio that would cut off the entire bottom line of this movie. The third image shown below is the normal mode for watching 4:3 material. Don't be turned away by the smaller image, if you get the right widescreen TV this would not be any smaller than the first image. The fourth image shown is a 1.66:1 zoom mode. This mode only zooms in on a 1.66:1 frame instead of the actual ratio of the widescreen TV (1.78:1). This preserves a little more of the subtitles, and while still harder to read because they might be slightly cropped, this is much better than having the entire line cropped off.

And of course this line totally looses all substance when the bottom line is chopped off. It would be best to leave this in the standard 4:3 mode of the widescreen TV to just add bars to the side. Or possibly the 1.66:1 zoom mode if available.