Pillarbox

Have you ever seen a movie or video that doesn't fill up the whole TV screen? It has black bars on the sides or top and bottom? That is called pillarboxing! It's like someone put two black pillars on either side of the video.

Sometimes, old movies or videos don't fit the newer TVs, so they have to be shrunk down to fit the screen. But rather than stretching them to make them fit, which would distort the picture, we add black bars to keep the original picture size and shape. This means you get to see the whole picture, just with black bars on the sides or top and bottom.

So next time you see a video with black bars, you'll know it's called pillarboxing!