I think the reason they re-did them was the same reason they redid the titles in 2004 and had the title logo sped up. It doesn't make a whole lot of sense, but they just wanted to do it. Pacific Titles definitely is independently reported on at least two non-Lucasfilm published sources to have made new opticals, so I don't think this is BS. If you might argue that the only did SOME of the opticals again, why are the new fades covering up the older ones on EVERY shot? So, by this logic either they did none of them or they did all of them. My answer is that the re-did all the optics in 1997, which then had digital matches covered over top of them for 2004. Maybe they did this to hide splices better, I don't know.