msycamore wrote: I've compared with all known sources and it looks like this was a deliberate change done for the 2004 DVD.

different line of questioning:

I stumbled upon it by accident when matching the aspect ratio of my Technidisc LD against the 2004 transfer.

How close of an alignment between the two are you getting with this? Are you trying to do the whole movie or just pieces? Asking as a DIF comparison is on my to do list, but haven't organized enough to find two versions which align in a semi-meaningful way to return an understandable result.