Since I couldn't find a forum specific to monitors, I chose this one. Hope it's appropriate for this very basic question I feel foolish even asking. But I'm many steps behind society techno-wise and this one is nagging me, so here goes... I've been looking at buying a 22" LCD monitor (16 x 9 or 10). My question is, my .avi video files--most of them formatted showing the letterboxes on my 15" CRT--will they automatically fill the screen of the LCD? Also, the letterboxes are sometimes different sizes, some of the videos narrower than others; will they all fill the screen on their own? You have to understand, I've never owned a widescreen anything, or even watched a movie on anyone else's, so I'm like a caveman wandering into an electronic store with all the bright shiny moving pictures...
You'll want to go 16:10 for a 22 inch monitor. When you blow video up full screen it will maintain it's aspect ratio. Film/Movies will still generally have smaller block blocks on the top and bottom as the sources are even wider than 16:9. SDTV feeds will have the pillarboxes on the sides.