"Letterboxing" is a process used when transferring a wide screen film to
videotape or laserdisc. By putting a blank border at the top and the
bottom, more of the screen's width can be preserved in the conversion.
(Normally, a scanning and panning technique which shows the most important
section of the image is used, but this very often results in cutting off
*something* of interest…) Letterboxing is used more frequently on
laserdisc than on videotape, since laserdisc quality is significantly
better, and thus the smaller image height produced by the technique doesn't
hurt as much. –>Steve Bennett