If u have a widescreen tv, when you watch a letterbox tv program, will it become distorted to fit the screen?

Question

If u have a widescreen tv, when you watch a letterbox tv program, will it become distorted to fit the screen?

Answer 1

You can choose to have it stretch or you can choose to keep it in standard format and it will put black bars on the sides.

You get used to the stretched look REALLY fast and dont notice it after about an hour.

Answer 2

First to be clear, a "letterbox" SDTV (not hi def) program appears on a standard screen (4:3) with black bars at top and bottom.  On a wide screen TV is will have bars at the side and bars at top and bottom, using only a small portion of the screen.  Most TVs have a "zoom" mode which will expand the picture to fill the screen; this does not cause any distortion.