2.6 was the 3-panel Cinerama AR. 2.85 is the AR for the letterboxed image on the Blu-ray. The Able and Charlie projectors would crop the sides a bit on a Cinerama screen.
It was the first movie filmed in the MGM Camera 65 film process with an AR of 2.76. Ben-Hur was the second. It has only been released on Laser Disc and VHS tape.
Cinerama titles on Blu-ray in Smilebox:
This Is Cinerama
Cinerama Holiday
Seven Wonders of The World
Search For Paradise
South Seas Adventure
Windjammer
The Wonderful World of The Brothers Grimm
The Best of Cinerama
How The West was Won
Holiday In Spain
The Golden Head
Cinerama’s Russian...
Warner Bros. Motion Picture Imaging provided the scanning of the original 6-perf 3-panel o-negatives. David Strohmaier and Tom H. March did the digital restoration.
Hoping for Raintree County. It was the first movie filmed in the MGM Camera 65 film process with an AR of 2.76. Ben-Hur was the second. It has only been released on Laser Disc and VHS tape.
The 3-panels of Cinerama did not have Mag stripping. The sound was on a separate 35mm strip of film. 3-panel Cinerama had an AR of about 2.6 with slight cropping on the sides at a Cinerama theatre. That's what you are seeing in the Smilebox version. In the flat version there is no cropping so...