The theatrical cut as is, exists on the DVD in good enough quality. HDTV versions are also theatrical. There are ways to watch the “flawed” film.
Sure, the theatrical version (it’s the same cut of the film) is available as HDTV or DVD. But that’s not the point, we have a print of the film now that we can make our own release from. 😃 As you can see from the samples I’ve posted the print is in great condition, archival quality even, and I don’t think it’s going to take us very long to fix the damage.
Plus we will also have both the DTS audio and the optical audio. Our scanner has run a few reels through his projector and said the optical mix sounds terrific. Speaking of which, is it best to simply leave it a a Dolby Surround 2.0 PCM, or should we decode it to 4.0?