I don't have a link to it, but I recall reading an interview with Gary Kurtz in which he said that while he disapproved of the way the special editions turned out because of the unnecessary additions and changes and so forth, he was fine with the digital recomposites because they helped make the effects more convincing while remaining faithful to the original intent and look.
Ultimately, I tend to agree with this on the whole. If a version like that were released, I'd watch it and be happy, as long as the colour and sound were also presented properly. Still, I very much understand the need to preserve them exactly as they were, and I would really like to see them that way too (seamless branching of a version with matte lines and without might be a good way to go).
Still, given LFL's track record with technical issues, it would not be a very good idea to let them get it into their heads that this would be acceptable, because the more things there are to be 'fixed', the more chance there is for them to screw it up somehow. An exact restoration and transfer of the originals without any alteration whatsoever offers the least chance of error, and the most chance of being what we'd all want to see.
I'm more picky about the authenticity of the sound. I would want all the original mixes to be included exactly as they were; most importantly the 70mm versions because they sounded so much better than the 35's, but they should all be there as options. In the case of Empire this would present a bit of a problem in that the actual edit of the movie differed in a few places, so ideally these image differences would be included as well through branching, but if this proved impractical then minor remixing in those parts for the sake of maintaining synch would have to do.