On August 30, 2010 at 15:19, gambitz said...
Answers your questions.
[Link: hometheater.about.com]There's a better website but I cant find it. Above explains the aspect ratio well.
The reasons for the black bars is well known, what is a question though is that when a station is broadcasting in HD, why the heck are they using ancient copies of movies that were reformatted in SD, with mono sound, giving you the worst of all worlds, a tiny little low quality picture in the middle of your big high definition screen with cheesy low quality mono sound. I guess it's because they have had that copy in the video library since they got it in 1973, and it would be expensive to replace.