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letterbox

   Also found in: Dictionary/thesaurus, Wikipedia 0.06 sec.

The effect of displaying a wide screen movie on a standard TV set the way it was originally shot in full panoramic format. On the TV, the image frame spans the full width of the screen, but because of the difference in aspect ratios of the two formats (wide screen movie vs. more square TV screen), the vertical height of the frame is reduced. The unused top and bottom areas of the screen appear as black bars.

Major motion pictures are shot with aspect ratios that are even wider than today's 16:9 wide screen TVs. As a result, the letterbox bars may still show, although not as thick as when displayed on a standard 4:3 screen (see aspect ratio for comparison). The term "letterbox" was coined because the wide frame resembles a letter envelope. Contrast with pan & scan. See pillarbox and anamorphic DVD.

Standard Vs. Wide Screen TVs
When a wide screen movie is shown on a standard TV set the way it was originally shot, the image is reduced vertically, producing the letterbox effect you see on the left. (Image courtesy of Intergraph Computer Systems.)
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1) DVD-L300 comes equipped with a letterbox eliminator, picture CD viewer, and 10-inch screen, $599.
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Anamorphic DVDs are specially encoded with more visual information than 4:3 letterbox DVDs, resulting in a sharper image when played on a widescreen TV.
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Although Yuri Grigorovich's stirring Spartacus (here reissued in its original letterbox format) defines itself as Soviet-era kitsch writ large, the performances of Vladimir Vasiliev, Natalia Bessmertnova, Maris Liepa, and the unforgettable Nina Timofeyeva look like heroic portrayals danced on an epic scale.
Blast from the past by Ulrich, Allan / Dance Magazine
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