It may protect them from legal ramifications, but it doesn’t change the fact that the product was changed in a negative way post purchase. It is no longer the same product that was purchased because the use case is no longer feasible.
If they pulled support all the way back to where only 4:3 was supported, I guarantee many people would be just as annoyed despite the fact that they probably never explicitly stated 16:9 was supported, they would have people up in arms about taking away that support. Despite it likely never being stated as guaranteed from what I can recall.