Babylon 5 - letterbox, or just cropping?

Factual Questions
1

I’ve been watching Bab5 in letterbox format on Sci-Fi, and it seems to me that they’ve just cropped off the top and bottom of the screen - closeups on people’s faces consistently cut off both top of the head and chin. I admit, I can’t remember if this is how it was shown originally or not, but it seems weird.

Also, how would they obtain a true letterbox version? Wasn’t the show originally shot for the TV screen? Can you transform such video to letterbox format, or would you have to shoot it that way to start with? I know my video rentals have been “formatted to fit my TV screen,” can they go the other way, too?

2

The show was filmed in true letterbox format and then cropped to fit the TV screen. All hail JMS.

3

B5 was NOT originally shown in letterbox format, but from what I understand it WAS filmed that way. Actually it was filmed two ways, one “letterbox” (i.e. movie aspect ratio) and one with “normal” tv aspect ratios. However, what SFC is showing right now for season 3 is NOT the correct LBX version. It is, in fact, cropped. I checked this out myself by comparing screen shots from the “LBX” versions with my older TV versions. The pictures are chopped.

I saw a transcript from a chat with JMS on alt.tv.babylon5; if I recall correctly, JMS reported that SFC is using the wrong version for seasons 2-4 and that they’re working to correct the problem. Season 1 was shown with the correct version and they supposedly also have the correct version of season 5.
So I may have to re-tape AGAIN all of season 2-4 to get the correct letterbox versions. Sigh.

4

There was a lot of discussion on USENET about the aspect ratios used. The following post (which you can find on deja.com) explained everything in detail.

Subject: Re: B5 to air in “letterbox” format on SciFi channel
From: “Joseph DeMartino” <Joseph-DeMartino@worldnet.att.net>
Date: 2000/07/13
Newsgroups: rec.arts.sf.tv.babylon5.moderated

According to him, B5 was shot one way - in Super35. This is cropped on the sides to produce the standard TV aspect ratio, and it is cropped on the bottom and the top to produce the HDTV aspect ratio.