Widescreen mode & black bars

Sometimes when I play movies in frontrow on my MacBook Pro, (and the dvd player in my car for that matter), there are black bars at the top and bottom of the screen. I do not understand this because both screens are widescreen format. Does this mean that the movie was filmed wider than 16:9 ratio?
It's kind of annoying if that is the case. I mean lots of people are upgrading to widescreen displays partially to avoid this, now film makers are going even wider.
If someone could explain this I would appreciate it because it is driving me nuts.
Paul

It also depends on the model of TV your viewing it on. Some TV's, or "Displays" as they're beginning to be referred to (16:9 of course) have auto settings that expand or stretch the image to remove the black or grey borders. That would explain why one movie in one format displays the same as another movie in another format. My Mitsubishi does it, but it's manual. I think some Dell's do it automatically... regardless of the fed aspect ratio or resolution.
Either way, Mac's are still cool.
Dave
24" iMac   Mac OS X (10.4.8)  

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