Method of fitting a widescreen aspect ratio movie onto a narrow 4-by-3 aspect ratio video display by the fitting the movie to the height of the video display and cutting off portions of its sides. Pan-and-scan is different from letterboxing, which shows the entire movie image fitting its width into the width of the video display and placing black bars above and below the picture. ecause movies are made in a wide format that is wider than traditional 4-by-3 aspect ratio television displays, the movies cannot be made to fit the video display screen without some modification. Letterboxed movies show the entire movie as it was seen in the theater, but they do not fill the height of the video display. Pan-and-scan is used to allow the screen to be filled, however, when this is done some of the picture is lost. The pan-and-scan method eliminates the black bars thus filling a 4-by-3 video display’s height and width. In turn, it loses a part of the original movie. o demonstrate the loss of movie data, take two pieces of regular writing paper and place them across one another forming a cross shape. Now imagine the piece of paper oriented vertically (taller up and down) were the same height as the other sheet of paper’s width. Now you can see how the wider paper (the one laying horizontally) does not fit in the smaller paper. If the heights match, the sides of the horizontal sheet have to be cut off. This is how pan-and-scan works; the sides of a wide movie are chopped off to fit a narrow screen.