It has been formatted to fit your television screen. On standard TV the alternative is letterboxing, which runs the movie's entire width, but adds black bars at the top and bottom. Now you can watch a full-screen movie as it is meant to be seen. And once you've seen a football game broadcast in wide-screen format, going back to a traditional set feels like putting on blinders. Now HDTV can include full, crystal-clear surround sound as a regular broadcast feature.
Computers read bits and bytes.
For example, you could be watching a baseball game and receive complete team stats at the same time, or get background information about the stories running on the nightly news. This is still in its infancy. The HDTV standard can also send information for display in an on-screen programming guide. Today you can receive a TV signal via antenna, cable or satellite dish. The same three approaches will work with HDTV, with some key differences.