Home audio & video: aspect ratio

16:9 TV's still have black bars

Because not all content uses the same aspect ratio. All TV prior to the late 90's and all movies prior to 1952 or 53 were 4:3 so they will have "pillarboxing" (bars on the left and right) when displayed on a 16:9 TV. Most larger blockbuster movies are wider (2.35:1) than the 16:9 aspect ratio of the new digital TV standard so you wind up with "letterboxing" (black bars across the top and bottom of the image. 1.78:1 movies (usually smaller releases) fill most of the screen but still have very slight black bars at the top and bottom if you look closely. This is all normal as the black bars are put in place so that you may see the entire picture as the creators intended.

There are people who absolutely must have their screen "filled" (actually you are cutting off parts of the image and decreasing resolution to do this) so they use the zoom function on their TV remote control. Zoom usually magnifies the image until the smaller picture dimension fills the screen (either top to bottom or left to right). I do not agree with this approach but at least it can be handled on the TV now as opposed to cutting the image off on the disc or broadcast itself (like those all "full screen" versions of DVD's). Choice is always better than no choice I guess. With a few older DVD's (late 90's releases) the letterboxing was encoded into a 4:3 image. When these are played back on modern 16:9 TV's you wind up with "windowboxing" (black bars on all four sides. This is the one case where I use the zoom function.