The bottom cropping of the 16 mm was probably necessary to fit the widescreen frame onto the film with the standard anamorphic squeeze ratio. I've read about this being the case on the Cinemascope releases on 8mm (there's one on my site under the 8mm section).

Dutch company Cineavision avoided such cropping by reducing the overall size of the image (Black borders on the sides). Less resolution was the result, but the entire height of the frame was left intact. (I also have one of those on my site).

If this goes for 8mm, it probably applies to 16mm as well, as the proportions are the same (i think).

If this is all true, the Catnap film source was anamorphic (16 mm?), and the version we're seeing now on DVD (and probably on his tape) is both unsqueezed and hardmatted. The question is if that unsqueezing and hardmatting was done optically, in-camera, on the telecine, or applied later. Like Puggo's, most home telecines today are transferred squeezed, and the aspect ratio corrected after the fact in software.

..and I still think that blue shift is an artifact of brightness correction in the capture device, struggling to compensate for changes from dark to light scenes (either automated or by manual fiddling).

If Catnap's is indeed from a 16mm reduction, it disqualifies it from being a "theater performance preservation", to me anyway.