In anticipation of the acceptance of this standard, direct view, front and rear projection video units are now marketed that are capable of displaying the anticipated HDTV programming. The current sets have been designed with features that make their wide screens useful today. The cinema modes make this set really interesting. This mode is useful only for programs specifically designed for it. It is an anamorphic mode, similar to film formats like CinemaScope and Panavision.
Anamorphosis refers to the practice of using different magnifications in different dimensions.
The picture is simply stretched across the screen's full width while keeping its normal height. A few laserdiscs and satellite broadcasts have been designed for this mode, the picture looking squeezed in normal mode, but in Fill mode, is stretched to fill the cinema screen. Normal programs look distorted in Fill mode. It is designed to magnify the picture horizontally and vertically the same amount. The result is a picture that just fits the width of the screen, but some picture is cropped off from the top and bottom.