Anamorphic widescreen is a videographic process that horizontally squeezes a widescreen image so that it can be stored into a standard 4:3 aspect ratio DVD image frame. Compatible playback equipment can then re-expand the horizontal dimension to show the original widescreen image.
...
Anamorphic widescreen DVDs are also recorded using a horizontal-squeezing technique. If they are played on standard 4:3 television without adjustment, the anamorphic image will look horizontally squeezed; the actors will look thin and tall and a circle will be squashed to appear as a vertical oval. Changing the playback equipment to use the "fill" or "4:3 letterbox" setting will stretch the image horizontally to exactly reverse the squeezing used during recording. This allows the movie to be viewed in its original widescreen format. If the playback screen has a 4:3 physical format, typically black letterbox bars will be inserted above and below the image to fill the empty space. If the screen has a 16:9 physical format, stretching the image back to its original rectangle shape will typically fill the screen.
...
If the source film's aspect ratio is wider than the standard 16:9 (approximately 1.78:1) aspect ratio, then the DVD producer may choose to hard matte, or record narrow black bars above and below, the DVD's video to preserve the original artistic appearance of the film.