What is the technical name/term/format? of a movie (video or DVD) where the screen has been shrunk, with the spaces of black screen on the top and bottom of the screen?
Posts: 3009 | Location: NJ, USA | Registered: 06-03-02
Letterbox DEFINITION:format for presenting movies on television that maintains the rectangular theater image on a television screen by reducing the overall image until the full width can be seen, resulting in blank space above and below the image.
Because many people want to see the "complete" Movie, the "Letterbox Format" came about. I do not know how that term was chosen. To get the complete Rectangle into that Square, they discovered that they could shrink the entire rectangle to fit that square. Meaning, what used to take 2 inches on your screen, now may only take 1.75 inches. Now a problem arrose. When you shrink the WIDTH to fit your dinky Square of a TV, the HEIGHT also has to be shrunk along with it, or else you're stretching the image as if it was on silly-putty ("Compression"). When the image was shrunk to fit the TV Screen, they were left with a gap at the top and bottom of the screen. So they simply fill it in with "Black". I guess the only alternative was to leave it snowy.
Posts: 2414 | Location: I live where I live and that's where I live. | Registered: 06-03-02
Don't know about legal size letters. It's the shape of and name for the hole cut in European house doors, through which the mail is posted by the mailman. It sometimes has a box on the inside, usually not. Viewing a film shown in this format is exactly like viewing through a letterbox!
