Another thing: I wouldn't quite trust the garbage matte removal presented in the official comparisons. I think that some of the matte boxes are gone simply due to the increased contrast and crushed blacks of the 04 version, not due to any conscious garbage matte removal but whoever did the official changes (and I doubt it was anyone who actually worked on the SE and it was quite possibly someone who doesn't even know how these things actually work) just saw the matte boxes in the GOUT and not in the 04SE, so he/she decided that it must be a deliberate fix.

Here is one of the "garbage matte removal" shots from your comparisons and the third picture is the GOUT picture, simply adjusted to approximately the same brightness and contrast levels as the SE. Similarly to the SE half of the stars are gone and so are the garbage mattes.

Furthermore, it is marked as a 1997 change, but to be honest, I seriously doubt that they digitally tweaked any shots just to remove garbage mattes in 97. If anything, it would have been much easier in 2004 when they were working completely in the digital realm.