none said:

Going with the redo theory, would they have re-filmed the lettering or just recomp'd as maybe some new development was figured out in optics?

Correct me if I'm wrong but I guess that the Kodalith would've needed to be re-filmed if a redo took place as just a recomp wouldn't solve the instability. I can actually not see any differences between the sources, but those that are available to us besides the GOUT are in not so good quality that a comparison is easy to make, the flyover special effect sequence seems to be identical to my eyes, but those elements were probably just the same anyway, they even were in the '81 redo despite the matte line clean up (I'm only talking about the two ships and their lasers and impact flashes). But when Verta pointed out this difference in stability and the fact that ILM did film many foreign variations of the crawl combined with the end credits find, it wouldn't actually surprise me if it was done.

none said:

So let's get our thoughts together, and send over a question or two. The blog is still active.

As Richard Edlund's in the first shot, he's got a website too: http://www.richardedlund.com/home

Could be worth a shot. The end credits redo intrigues me just as much. If the crawl actually was updated shortly after it premiered, I suspect it was done on the same batch of prints with the updated end credits.