The garbage mattes were there in the theater, but you would have been hard pressed to notice them. On home video they artificially brightened things up a bit, which made those mattes plain as day. Even with the previous to DVD home video releases you could get rid of the garbage mattesd with the right contrast/brightness setting. Most of them are still there on the 2004 SE, but they are just not artificially brightened so they don't show up quite as easily as they did on previous home video releases.

I think these look pretty good for what they are. I really like the film grain. I don't think it looked this grainy on the laserdisc, which just goes to show that it's at least a cut above the original lasediscs, which back in the day were amazing. I like the dirt, scratches and image instability, because it really makes me feel like I'm back in '77 watching this in a theater.