can someone answer a general aspect ration question to me

[consumerx]

ok, first i really dont know how to explain this. When i play a movie on my 42' widescreen tv on 1080p HD it seems the movie itself is enlarged, compared to when i play fdor instance on my laptop. So what i did was i made sure everything in the settings is correct, i made sure the playback is on 16x9 widescreen. Still the movie(lets say like zodiac which is widescreen) still seems enlarged compared to my macbook. the black bars seem to be a bit smaller then more thicker on macbook. can someone explain to me that this is normal? do tv's stretch out the black bars? another weird thing i read is on the back of dvd's where they commonly say "widescreen version" the movie seems to be full screen and no black bars. is this normal? is it me or my tv thats gone insane??? please help me understand aspect ratio!
tldr; why do movies seem enlarged on tv then compared to macbook or iphone with black bars on top and bottom?

[guns1inger]

Overscan. Look for a mode that displays without it. On Samsung LCDs it is called Just Scan

[jagabo]

In addition to the overscan issue, your HDTV has a 16:9 aspect ratio. Computer displays are usually less wide, typically 16:10. That would leave wider black bars top and bottom on the computer.

Then there's the fact that many widescreen movies are wider than 16:9 (1.78:1). 2.35:1 is very common. Those movies will have black bars even on a 16:9 HDTV.

The picture on the box is marketing and has nothing to do with what's inside.

[Beavis]

Also, some TV's have various picture / zoom modes which might cause some of the picture to be enlarged or cut off- even for widescreen sources. In such a case, you could cycle through them with the movie playing to find the one that gives you the best result.

[consumerx]

thanks everyone for the info.