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Aspect ratio means the ratio between picture's width and height. It also means in many cases the aspects of your TV set -- old-fashioned TVs that most people have are 4:3 and widescreen TVs are 16:9.
DVDs are in either 16:9 or in 4:3 format -- most of the movies are stored in 16:9 format, but this doesn't mean that you need 16:9 TV --> your DVD player recognizes a signal on the disc which format the movie is in and also recognizes which TV set you're using.
NOTE! Movie can be widescreen in some rare cases but still in stored on the DVD in 4:3 format which means that picture has thick black bars in top and in bottom of the movie _HARDCODED_ in it, not generated by DVD player.
So:
-16:9 movies in 16:9 (widescreen) TVs use the full picture area
-4:3 movies in 4:3 (old-fashioned) TVs use the full picture area
-16:9 movies in 4:3 TVs (most common case nowadays) show you the full picture, but you have "letterboxed" picture which means that you have thick black bars in top and bottom of the picture
-4:3 movies in 16:9 TVs (like watching regular TV broadcast with widescreen TV) have three options: either you have black bars in left and right side of the picture _OR_ the picture is strecthed to fit the full screen (when people on the screen look "fat" :) _OR_ if the movie is stored in 4:3 but has hardcoded letterbox picture, your 16:9 TV set might be able to show the picture so it doesn't show up the black bars, but uses the actual image area on your TV using full area of your 16:9 TV.
...then again, movie itself can be in various aspect ratios like in 2.35:1 -- but if the movie is in 2.35:1 (back of your DVD cover says normally the picture aspect ratio), the film in deed is stored in 16:9 format, because DVDs only have two aspects -- 16:9 and 4:3 -- and that means that if movie has aspect ratio of 2.35 and is stored in 16:9 format, it has widescreen picture, but still has black areas in top and bottom of the picture.
Confusing?-)
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