It turns out that The Theatrical Edition of The Two Towers also suffered from digital noise reduction.
https://screenshotcomparison.com/comparison/7067
Hey there! What’s the progress like on TT? I just finished up building a subtitle track for the non-hardcoded Elvish dialogue and adding in all the commentary tracks, so I think until the UHD release, I have my ideal FoTR copy for Plex! Thanks for the killer work