Refers to the stretching or squeezing of an image so that it utilizes the entire area of a film frame with a different aspect ratio. The most common usage has a 1.85 to 1 or greater wide screen movie "squished" on film with 4:3 aspect ratio frames. A special lens is used on the projector to exactly reverse this distortion and produce the correctly proportioned picture on the screen. The same technique is used in video from time to time. On DVD's, the same 720 by 480 pixel frame may be used to represent either a 4:3 or 16:9 aspect ratio picture. The player has selectable means of proportioning the picture so it appears correct, although on a standard (4:3) TV, the 16:9 image will appear "Letterbox ". Better results are had for a 16:9 enhanced version of the movie if the full screen mode is selected on the player and the height control on the monitor manually adjusted downwards. "Anamorphic" in video is a misnomer. Video has no aspect ratio until it is displayed on the screen. The TV set or monitor determines the aspect ratio using settings specified by the viewer or sometimes automatically by taking some format data (not the picture data) from the video signal. So far the label "anamorphic" is used only for the DVD 16:9 enhanced wide screen programs or 16:9 high resolution programs. More on anamorphic video including adjustment of TV sets.
