I think the thing is, he was going to wait until he could get everything just right, but the combination of us begging him to do it sooner than later, and his advisors telling him there might not be a DVD market by the time he was ready led to the 2004 release.
I think that this box set next year, assuming it's his archival version and not another stop gap (which who knows at this point) will have everything tweaked out properly. It's just a guess on my part, but I too have noticed the level of "good enough" going on not only with the 2004 DVD release, but with the prequels as well.
Many of you probably know about how John Williams scored his music for the prequels before Lucas was done editing them. As a result much of his music was re-cut (not always with the smoothest of edits) and in AOTC and ROTS, there are actually music tracks lifted from previous films. I get the impression that Lucas figured, screw it I don't have time now to have Williams re-do this, but I'll have him smooth everything out once I'm more finished.
This is all speculation on my part, but would you guys be happy if the 30th anneversary box set aleviated all of our concerns?
I keep hoping that next year is the year we can repair the rift in our fandom.