The LCD format oddity poses a nightmare for users
SINCE THE beginning of square pixels on computer monitors during the reign of Atari ST, Amiga and IBM PS/2 VGA, the common resolutions were based on two screen aspect ratios: either 16:10 (or more correctly 8:5) for 640x400, or 4:3 for 640x480.
The latter became dominant, with follow-up resolutions of 800x600 SVGA, 1024x768 XGA, 1600x1200 UXGA and 2048x1536 QXGA all based on the same aspect ratio. The only exception was 1280x1024 SXGA, using a slightly different 5:4 proportion.
Both of these ratios offer similarity to the standard TV screen proportions, as well as reasonably comfortable single document or web page reviewing and editing. Not to forget most games, which up until now have been optimised for these aspect ratios.
As the widescreen HDTV emerged, with 16:9 aspect ratio - still far from the 21:9 (7:3) seen in cinemas - a class of monitors emerged, bridging the gap. The best examples are 1280x768 or 1280x800 WXGA notebook screens handling both widened XGA resolution as well as 1280x720 or HD 720p pixel-for-pixel precise, as well as 1920x1200 WUXGA resolution, often seen on 17-inch laptop and 24+ inch desktop monitors.
The latter, probably the ideal monitor resolution for 2008, gives you not just full 1080p HDTV capability at 1920x1080 display area plus plenty of space for buttons and menus, but also pixel-for-pixel sharp matching of both old 800x600 - read: Maple Story and GunBound kids' obsessions - and, of course, 1600x1200 DTP and workstation stuff, just in case they don't support the full 1920x1200. A 24-inch screen with such specs, plus HDCP-compatibilty for DRM-infected HD, can be had for US$400 now.
Also, it seems 16:10 WUXGA is ideal for simultaneous two full-page document or Web editing, fitting both pages perfectly in both proportion and readability. And the 2560x1600 and near-future 3840x2400 30-inchers will keep the same 16:10 ratio, making it the next standard.
Or, will they? This CES show seems to point to something different - yet another format change, this time leaving us, the users, worse off.
Basically, some beancounter must have come up with a "bright idea" to somehow cut the LCD panel mother glass the same way for both those el cheapo TVs and computer monitors. Screw the game or software compatibility, or pixel-matched earlier resolutions - everyone goes 16:9 !
So, a plethora of "new" screen sizes awaits us - 21.6 inches, 26 inches at the top, and 15.6 inches at the bottom. 1920x1080, 1280x720, 1600x900 - all kinds of old-new funny pixel counts.
Your Web pages, which actually benefit most from narrow portrait monitors, now can't be seen in full height anymore, but there'll be plenty of wasted space on the side. As for the games, find me titles fully optimised - or even able to play - at the 16:9 ratio.
Unless, well, you start, interpolating the old 4:3 resolution on such screen and get "widely distorted" environments and monsters, not unlike those " instantly fattened" newscasters when a 4:3 TV signal is widened to do fullscreen on 16:9 HD televisions.
Shurely that's enough. It's time to stop playing with the resolutions this way, and stick with the 16:10 as the best way forward. Sure, if the market really wants it, they can have a choice of various "niche" resolution - after all, in Seoul you can find fully square 1024x1024 desktop LCD monitors too.
Computers and TVs, no matter how much they supposedly "converge", are still very different beasts usage-wise. While HTPC or Media Center PCs can be optimised for TV use, please leave us "other" computer users to have our own freedom on the resolution, display size and proportions, colour quality and such.
After all, the display industry, if in dire need of a new revenue and profit generator can always turn to OLED displays! The popularity and the buzz is there, not to mention the Twiggy-thin wall-pasting profiles.
If not that, why not do Hi-Fi colour LCDs with 10 bits per base colour pixel and, say, six primary colours instead of three? That makes a nice total 60-bit pixel, fitting a 64-bit word with a bit of, umm, waste - or extra DRM control bits, for someone. µ
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I think this is a logical way to go. Right now I can run my computer to my tv and scale the rez, but when I hook up my HD receiver to my 22" 16:10, I lose the :.5 on either side of the screen.

What's wrong with a standard, native resolution shared across our media devices?
Wider is not better for this. If anything some folks have been missing the "taller" part of the 4:3 ratio, which will be addressed when the world quads all the current resolutions (as you mentioned in the 3840 30" monitors that are on the horizon).

This is an industry move that does not help the consumer, and, as such, should be flatly given a strong negative response.

Admittedely, while most Hollywood blockbusters use the cinemascope format(1:2,35) many use variations(1:2,4)(to avoid paying the cinemascope royalty :-)) or one of the two regular widescreen formats(american widescreen 1:1,85, european widescreen 1:1,66). Then there's the 1:2 of 70 mm and of course all those old movies in Academy format 1:1,33(4:3).

In the old days, when cinema screens were in the Academy format and cinemascope was brand new the projectionists would often zoom in on the middle of the image in order to fill the screen(much like was common in the VHS days), thereby cutting off the sides of the image. And then when the cinemas bought new cinemascope format screens most films were still being shot in Academy, they would zoom in on the image to fill the screen, thereby cutting off the top and bottom of the image.

Most people I know have their widescreen tellies set to stretch the image in order to fill the screen. Which looks most peculiar when the broadcast is letterboxed 16:9 which then gets stretched to resemble cinemascope with black bars on the top and bottom.

My point is that the desire to fill the whole screen under all circumstances is self-defeating and the surest way towards crappy looking pictures. In some ways I am lucky when doing graphics for the event market, I get to know exactly what hardware will be playing back the video. I get to work with the designer and together we define the aspect ratio that is most appropiate for the gig(circular screens is all the rage in Oslo now for example, but we've also done triangular and I think these look particularly cool). But when a game or movie or webpage is made the designer cannot know what aspect ratio it will be seen in, and most likely it will be seen in all manners of aspect ratios with all kinds of different stretching. This makes it much harder to commit to a particular aspect ratio and really use that format for all it is worth. From that point of view, and from the point of view of consumers who are hardly aware that aspect ratios exist, one format to rule them all would be preferable...

b
Personally, I know both Half-Life 2 and Counter Strike offer a "16:9" option.

Having just spotted it the other day I was quite surprised; I imagined the game engine would intelligently choose the aspect ratio based on resolution. Who would play at 1920*1200 with 4:3?
This is why CRT's are better.
Ok, so they're as deep as they are wide, and weigh half a ton, but they're better.
Movies don't use only anamorphic 21:9 or 2.35:1 formats (original cinemascope is 2.66:1), also in use are masked sizes 1.85:1 and 1.66:1. Therefore 16:9 (or 1.78:1) is a relatively good compromise, but a compromise nevertheless. 2.35:1 would start looking ridiculous on a small TV, and the black bars on the sides would be huge when showing older/transitional 4:3 stuff.

Anyway, these should not be that big problems for computers, as the aspect ratios of laptop screens can often be (and often have been) something more unconventional than 4:3 (or 16:10). For example, I think Sony Vaio has used a 16:9 screen size for a long time.
Why all the strange ratio?

Can we all use an easy ratio like 16:8 or 2:1?

Make it easier for scaling too.
Maybe, in your case, it's the 22-inch screen's "ultimate oddity that should be banned worldwide" 1680x1050 resolution which lops off the sides of the 1920x1080 HD receiver's signal - if that one is digitally mapped pixel-for-pixel, that is. I got no such problems with 24-inch 1920x1200 displays.

Nova
If you use your computer for more than watching movies, say work??? than you'd know that losing vertical resolution is a big deal.
Right now I'm currently using a sharp 42" HDTV as my only monitor. Call of Duty 4, Bioshock, Unreal Tournament 3 do support those resolutions (1920x1080) FYI. 
So not all hope is lost. Now I am starting to wonder which game supports that weird curved odd ball Alienware DLP.
The Amiga did not have square pixels, which is why it was so good at video. It had NTSC compatible pixels which were taller than they were wide. This was because of the way a composite color video signal is encoded.
You loss the .5 all around on the HD receiver because it is over scanned. This is the area where the caption and other info like the time code is. It happens on all screens even your old tube TV. You computer is more than likely putting black in this area so it appears that nothing is being cut off.
I think they should just convert movie theaters and TV cameras to 4:3 and leave my computer alone.
Why not just design the monitor with a 90-degree swivel option so that it can be used as portrait for PC use and landscape for TV use?
Might take some firmware or software optional switching along with the rotation to do the trick.
This is just a reflection of what people are already doing. No need for all the confused formats 1080P works just fine. I am not sure why anyone would want dead space on the edges wile watching a movie.
I have used 1020x1080 for a year and it works very well. Why have a separate format for TV and computer when they both do the same thing?
To show long pages take the wide screen and
rotate 90 degrees into portrait more. A lot or
screen can do this.
Put your dock/menubar along the left edge of the screen. Get Opera and put the tab bar along the right edge of the screen. That way your web area is more vertically oriented.

Sharing glass keeps the costs down which means more and better screens for everybody.
I'd just like to point out that games running on the source engine have properly supported 4:3 16:10 and 16:9 aspect ratios from the start, so to name a few of the more popular:
HL2
HL2:ep1
HL2:ep2
SIN:Emergence
Portal
TF2
CSS
DoD:Source
I think the problem is that 16:10 is an excellent standard to keep to! It's VERY close to the Golden Ratio (1.61something:1 - think 'A' size paper) which time and again has been demonstrated to be the most attractive rectangle to humans, probably because it's close to the ratio of our field of vision.
Almost every game that supports 16:10 also supports 16:9. I've been using a 1080p with a computer for a year and haven't seen an exception to that yet. 

In fact, because there are more console ports now, game assets such as menu backgrounds are using the 16:9 ratio images from the console version.
Movies don't use only anamorphic 21:9 or 2.35:1 formats (original cinemascope is 2.66:1), also in use are masked sizes 1.85:1 and 1.66:1. Therefore 16:9 (or 1.78:1) is a relatively good compromise, but a compromise nevertheless. 2.35:1 would start looking ridiculous on a small TV, and the black bars on the sides would be huge when showing older/transitional 4:3 stuff.

Anyway, these should not be that big problems for computers, as the aspect ratios of laptop screens can often be (and often have been) something more unconventional than 4:3 (or 16:10). For example, I think Sony Vaio has used a 16:9 screen size for a long time.

I'm running a 37" 1080p computer screen and I love it. Game consoles will make all future games compatible with 1080p, which user base grows every freakin' day, so the HDTV ratios on computer screens make for easy game portability...
16:9 is the perfect ratio - it's great to have one standard ratio for all media.

The biggest criminal offence is to not have 1:1 pixel mapping and black borders.
I personally have come to hate large resolution, wide screen (i.e., wider than 4:3) displays on laptops particularly.
If you play them with native resolution, the fonts get really hard to read. If you reduce the resolution, everything becomes blurred.
Yeah, I know I could get myself glasses in principle, but why on earth does the font size on my laptop screen have to be in line with the small print on the back of an insurance contract? IMHO, it should be the size of a decent newspaper text font.

And I do share the "losing vertical resolution" concern that others have raised. 
Now, one elegant way around it is flat screen monitors that you can turn by 90° to get from 16:10 to 10:16. One colleague of mine has one and I really admire that nifty thing. However, I seriously doubt that monitor makers will support this feature in the long run for anything but niche models (= high prices).

*sigh*
16:10 is pretty close to what is most aesthetic and mathematically pleasing.. i say keep it!
actually this sounds good for the TVs. maybe we can finally get panels that are 1 to 1 instead of 1280x768 panels used for 720p and 1680x1050 laptops falsely advertised as full HD.
computers can always just use more processing power to get the interpolation right and computer users can use leftover space in either dimension for controls, but I'd like my movies to show up correctly.