Product: The Transformers - The Movie (1986)
Rating: 4.0
Good image quality, lots of features, but not true theatrical widescreen.
Let me say first that those hoping for a true theatrical widescreen format will be disappointed. The movie was released in theaters in a higher aspect ratio than 16x9 which means it had to be modified to fit in both 16x9 and 4x3 format. In the widescreen format, the entire left and right sides of the movie is displayed, but rather than slightly letterbox the movie, about an inch was cropped off both the top and bottom. You can see this very clearly in the scene with the beakers breaking at the very beginning of the movie where in the full screen version you can see the tops of the beakers while in the widescreen version you can not.The fullscreen version is the opposite. They cropped the left and right sides and left the top and bottom intact. So basically if you watch the widescreen you lose part of the top and bottom of the movie and if you watch the fullscreen you lose the left and right side. Neither edition is complete and each edition has more visible area than the other. The widescreen format has less cropping, but it is still cropped.The back of the case says the movie is remastered and color corrected. I compared this version with the special edition movie DVD from Rhino that was released in 2000, which also claims to be remastered. The color does look a bit brighter in this release, so overall it does look better.There are also a lot more features in the edition than there was in Rhino's release including a Japanese transformers episode never before seen in the US. There is also a "pop-up video" version of the movie with bits of interesting trivia which the DVD calls the `Autobot Matrix of Knowledge'. There is both official and fan movie commentary in the widescreen version, but not in the fullscreen version. The 2nd disc contains a number interviews and bonus DVD-ROM content. The box claims there are easter eggs on both discs but so far I've only found some on the first one.One of the downsides I've found besides the widescreen issue is that the audio track cannot be changed on the fly (at least on my player). I'm not sure why this was disallowed and it may not bother others, but I found it annoying that I could not switch audio tracks without restarting the movie.Overall if you're a Transformers fan you'll want to add this to your collection. It is a good release, but it lacks perfection because of the lack of an actual theatrical widescreen version.