Ack.... from above... does the TV-formatted version will just cut off the edges?
It usually cuts off the left and right sides; sometimes just the left; sometimes just the right, depending on the acton. I prefer letterbox.
There are several things they do to make it fit the screen. They do crop the left and right sides, but the other thing they do is "pan and scan" where scenes that normally have more than one character on the screen at a time will instead flip back and forth between the characters. What you miss out on is a lot of interacting between characters and some reaction shots.
I urge you to get the widescreen edition. What will probably happen with a movie like LOTR is all that lovely scenery will be chopped to pieces, characters will be cut out of frames, and shots like the following will likely be unrecognizable:
You know, looking at these I wonder why in the world PJ would even ALLOW a pan-and-scan DVD to be released.