HD Primer: Why are there black bars on my new HDTV?

You just bought a new HDTV with widescreen, and expect all of your content to fill all of the screen, right? You get it home, and see most of the content has black bars or is centered in the middle with bars on the side. What is this?

Here is one of the most detailed and interesting explanations of all the differing reasons and types of screen types present on HDTV’s, presented by Engadget HD. It comes with screenshots of each type of screen you may encounter, with full technical explanations of each.

The gist is: most shows are still presented in 4:3 mode, which is typical old-fashioned tube TV dimensions, and only carry enough info to fill this space. You can set it to “stretch”, but depending on the TV, it may look “stretched out” and unnatural. This is slowly changing as more and more shows are shot in widescreen.

Here’s the article: Link