Pan and scan is a method of adjusting widescreen film images so that they can be shown in fullscreen proportions of a standard-definition 4:3 aspect ratio television screen, often cropping off the sides of the original widescreen image to focus on the composition's most important aspects.
A 2.35:1 film still panned and scanned to smaller sizes. At the smallest, 1.33:1, nearly half of the original image has been cropped.
Widescreen images are displayed within a set of aspect ratios used in film, television and computer screens. In film, a widescreen film is any film image with a width-to-height aspect ratio greater than 4:3 (1.33:1).
Widescreen in a control room
Conrad Luperti, J. Marvin Spoor, and William S. Adams with the Natural Vision camera
An early (1994) Sony Widescreen Television