What is a widescreen movie?
The shape of a movie theater screen is wider than the shape of a television screen. So, when movies appear on TV, the left and right sides of the image are usually cut off and you miss about 30 percent of the film’s original picture. The widescreen (or letterbox) format, preferred by film buffs, displays movies on a television screen as originally intended by the film’s director. That’s why you see black bars at the top and bottom of the screen when you watch a letterbox movie on your television. In order to fit the whole picture on the screen, the image has to be reduced.
