letterboxed
An imaging or cinematic technique wherein a movie or TV image is displayed on a screen that is too narrow without being stretched and therefore distorted. This technique causes to show black bars at the bottom and top of the image.
For example, think of a 16:9 image in its original unstretched state displayed fully in a 4:3 screen.
See pillarboxed for when an image has black bars on the left and right sides.
See also
The following tags are aliased to this tag: letter_boxed and letterbox (learn more).