While, looking through some of the posts today I noticed a mentioning of Hasbro not knowing anything about Beast Machines being letterboxed. This is the first I've heard about the fandom wondering that. (if i've been under a rock it must be a pretty small one; hardly anyone talks about beast machines anymore) The people to ask obviously is Mainframe. Though I doubt Mainframe would create so much wasted space in every episode unless it was put in stone that it will be used. It can darn near double the rendering time and therefore become more expensive.

The only real evidence we have of letterboxed footage is most of the introduction. (Ever wondered why cybertron was oval shaped?) The introduction uses shots from the first few episodes. NO, the intro is not cropped, the episode is. check out this link for comparisons: http://www.geocities.com/masterofsonic/bmcompare.html
The only non-letterboxed shot is the last shot of cheetor as the camera zooms out to the title screen. this shows that at least the first few episodes were letterboxed.

Here's another piece of the puzzle.
A few years ago I went to the Egyptian Theater in Hollywood to watch a showing of Raiders of the Lost Ark. (it had gone through the "Lowry process" to remove grain) Anyway, I overheard my friend talking to someone behind us and I looked to see just a regular guy and he mentioned his name... Bob Skir. After the show I transformed into "super! fanboy" and asked him a ton of questions. I talked to him through email a couple times and after asking him about a possible boxed set he said something along the lines of hasbro or mainframe originally planning for a boxed set and thus made the show letterboxed.

In the end, we'll just have to wait another month or two to find out.

 

That's funny, I remember reading years ago that Bob Skir wanted the humor in Beast Machines to be less slapsticky and more along the lines of an Indiana Jones film.

 

Letterbox eh? It's interesting if true. I'll probably buy the set just for the DVD quality, but widescreen would be icing on the cake.

 

Beast Machines is posted in a news group. From what i've downloaded and watched so far it's not letterbox. The guy posting it doesn't usually change the format.

 

Well, it didn't AIR letterboxed. The rumor goes something like it was rendered letterboxed (or had the capability of being rendered letterboxed, or something alone those lines), and chopped down for TV.

Feel free to correct me if I'm wrong.

-XCN-

 

I'd prefer HD, or animorph to letterbox, but that would still be cool.

 

Well Babylon 5 was not shown letterbox for its TV run but the DVD's were. I suppose this means there is a chance.

 

well if the whole show isn't already rendered in widescreen they sure as heck aren't going to call up mainframe and have them render it all again. what i wonder is if they stopped the widescreen rendering at any point. the reason is that you'd go from wide to regular when you watch the episodes. i would think they'd keep them all 4:3 if some weren't rendered wide.

 

I'm pretty sure that Animorphs was filmed in fullscreen, so a letterbox release would just be cutting off the top and bottom of the picture. Not good.

Unless you mean you'd like to see Beast Machines get an anamorphic widescreen DVD transfer, then yeah, that would be cool