When a 16:9 aspect ratio movie is shown on a regular television set, there are black bars on the top and bottom of the screen. This preserves the original shots of the movie.
A technique for fitting a rectangular image into a frame with a lesser width-to-height ratio, by shrinking it until its horizontal axis fits in the destination without cropping, at the expense of leaving unused display area area (in the form of bars, usually black, at the top and bottom of the screen).
The process of putting black bars at the top and bottom of the screen to change a 4:3 aspect ratio image to a wider aspect ratio image.
The scaling of a widescreen image to fit a standard 4:3 aspect ratio TV screen by shrinking the image so that the width fits exactly. The horizontal black bars that appear above and below the image are actually recorded with the picture, so some of the picture's vertical resolution is lost when you view it. Letterboxing is much more common on DVD movies than VHS videos.
Technique of shrinking the image just enough so that its entire width appears on TV screen, with black areas above and below the image.
A technique marked by black strips at the top and bottom of a screen image that allows for video or film shot at wide aspect ratios to be viewed on devices such as standard televisions that have squarer shapes. M-N
Video reproduction of a film that places the entire, uncropped picture on the TV screen-eliminating the pan-and-scan problems that result when a wide format is cropped to fit a 4:3-ratio (or even, in the case of extremely wide originals, a 16:9-ratio) screen. The term letterbox is supposed to have been derived by someone's impression of the view looking out through the mail slot in their door or local mailbox. It describes a view that is wide but not very tall. Letterbox is not a format, just a phrase that describes the visual appearance of the piccture on the screen. See also Matting; Pan and scan.
A method for displaying a widescreen image (16:9 aspect ratio) on traditional television screens (4:3 aspect ratio) that reproduces the original image. Black bars appear, however, at the top and bottom of the screen.