Need help editing video resolutions/aspect ratios

Gravemind · November 17, 2019

What I'm trying to do in the simplest terms is make 1920x800 videos into 1920x1080 and/or some kinda trickery to make the 1920x800 not be all stretched when played through a sub-par video player.

To explain a bit, the TV my mom watches stuff is "Smart" but not that smart. So she can watch movies I find(No, there is no possibility of Smartcasting, Netflix, Hulu Kindle Roku Sticks, DvD player, game console, etc.. so don't ask) I put them on a USB stick and it plays them. But if the video isn't a perfect 16:9 aspect ratio(TV is 1920x1080p) regardless of resolution then it gets stretched vertically to fit the screen and looks like total ass. None of the Aspect Ratio settings make any appreciable difference. 'Wide' just pulls it horizontally a few pixels, 'Panoramic' literally just copies what 'Wide' does, 'Zoom' is pointless.

I've found programs VSDC to manually add black bars on the top and bottom like what feels like a caveman would do, but it's achingly slow; often taking 2x-3x the length of the video to export. I'm much more familiar with Handbrake which is much faster, but nothing really jumps out at me except for the 'Anamorphic' options. Is what I'm looking for under one of those options? Is it even possible to do what I want in general without hardcore editing? Or is doing it the caveman way of adding bars literally my only option?

The TV in question