Possible to rotate video shot in portrait to landscape?

Question

So I shot a video holding the camera in portrait orientation (vertical). When I streamed the video to my Apple TV, instead of rotating the image to fit the full screen, the video is a thin strip down the center of the screen (maintaining the portrait orientation). On iOS I am able to lock the screen orientation so I can turn the phone sideways and see the video properly (otherwise the same thing happens in landscape mode), however this has no effect on Apple TV. Perhaps the physical video cable might make a difference but I don't have one to test, nor would that solve the bigger problem of exporting the video into other applications.
This seems incredibly counter-intuitive to the way video cameras have always worked. That is, regardless of how a camera is positioned, the video is always played back in the proper orientation so that it fills the screen. I can not think of a single application where I would want my video displayed as a thin strip down the center of a screen.
Link to Example Image – http://gallery.me.com/woodwyn/100031/IMG_1159/web.jpg?ver=13059966380001
So I imported it into iPhoto, in which i can see the rotate button, but does not appear to allowthea rotate function. I then opened it in QuickTime and again found no way to alter the orientation. Finally I imported it into iMovie, and was surprised there was no way to correct the screen orientation there either. iPhone and Quicktime simply created vertical windows for playback, while iMovie constrained the portrait 1280 height into a vertical 720, and stretched the portrait 720 width across the 1280 horizontal. Completely unacceptable!!
Surely there is a simple way to do this that I am simply overlooking?

Answer 1

Yes, iMovie 9 will do this, which I had to upgrade to. It is still a rather convoluted process, but at least it can be done.
As for holding the camera horizontally in the future, well that is not always practical. It is much easier to hold onto the camera vertically, as well as for stability.
However, I did discover something ... the iPhone does not seem to change orientation during filming regardless of how the phone is held. Evidently whatever orientation the camera is in when recording starts, is the orientation the rest of the movie will be in, regardless of whether it changes for the remaining movie or not.
So, in order to see the film as I shot it, I will actually have to make clips out of every change in orientation, then change the orientation to landscape if it is not already, flip some 180 as they are upside down depending on the rotation from orientation to orientation. It really would have made things so much simpler if the iPhone mimicked the way traditional cameras work.