The fact that the O-neg no longer conforms to the original 1977 version of Star Wars is a technicality that Lucasfilm has been twisting into confusing people that "the original version doesn't exist anymore" as in "the original version has been destroyed and is not coming back" which is clearly absurd. Aside from the fact that an O-neg scan is by no means the only source of a high-res telecine (in fact only rarely is the O-neg used for releases), various private collectors and public institutions have undertaken preservation efforts, and it has been well documented as well that not only are the original negatives and interpositives still preserved in the LFL archives, but that Lucas himself personally owns specially-made high quality prints, and even lent these to the laboratories who restored the SE as reference guides.

Why didn't they make a new transfer for this release? Because they didn't have to. As can be seen--and the dvds are currently in Amazon.com's top ten sales--they could get just as much money from us by not spending a cent. This way we buy both these and the eventually-released restored versions. Obviously this has nothing to do with personal preference or artistic vision of Lucas, otherwise he would not be releasing them. And besides that, the whole thing was schemed up by Jim Ward, not Lucas himself, who isn't usually too involved with his companies sales. Its simply about getting money from people. 2001 was the first year of Lucasfilm dvd and they had TPM. 2002 had AOTC. 2003 had Indy trilogy. 2004 had the SE. 2005 had another release of teh SE which didn't do too good but it was okay because they also had ROTS. Now they need something else so they throw a LD transfer of the OOT and they have another huge dvd sale. Next year will have the saga box set, which i feel probably wont sell very well unless they include the OOT in a restored form.