You_Too said:
Maybe eac3to is that smart?

Sure, why not?
Surely I'm not the first to think of that idea.
Shirley might be an eac3to developer :)

Back to frame counts, I think I'm noticing a trend.
Seems like each movie is split into three 'chunks' for lack of a better term.

___ANH_________ESB______ROTJ__0-thru
_85225_______75306_______84511 -thru
147672______151133______142918 -thru end

Sometimes the chunk size match the LD sides, but not always.
Among NTSC LDs the pulldown cadence doesn't change at reel boundaries-- it only change at chunk boundaries (or side boundaries) which make them easy to IVTC.
The chunks are all less than one hour.
I'm wondering if those telecine were stored on three tapes recorded in "1-hour mode" if there exist such a thing among professional tape formats.

Metal has already pointed out some spots where digital broadcast was breaking up and frames went missing.
Besides those type of transmission errors, do we know of any missing frames
which are NOT surrounding those chunk boundaries?