Thanks Hotrod, pretty much what I expected.

Knightmessenger, I get your point about this rerelease of the GOUT setting a precedent, but I still think it was done as a matter of convenience in order to release two six disc trilogies.

Restoring them to some extent that would even be watchable on blu-ray and HD to the equivalent that the GOUT is watchable on a widescreen TV, would not be such a convenience I am afraid. This guy does what he wants, and what the fans think or even his own staff thinks seems to be generally disregarded. This is the guy who, even after four different DVD releases of his masterpieces that have been altered to fit his original vision, has still yet to bother to fix any of the the glaring errors they were originally shipped with. Wouldn't even be surprised if the eventually blu-ray release intentionally ends up with all those same errors, just so they can defend their position that they were in fact "deliberate creative decisions".

Another pessimistic thought I can't help but shake, is that maybe he has figured that since DVD is now already on its way to becoming an obsolete format, he doesn't see releasing them again on it as too big of a deal. I can imagine when it comes to a request for a blu-ray release he will respond with something along the lines of,
[GL voice]I released them on DVD in the highest quality that they still exist in and people complained about how badly they looked on their TV sets. I could put the same thing on a blu-ray, but I can't even imagine how those would look on HD. People would be like, 'What are you doing to us, these look awful! Just restore them in HD already'. What they wouldn't understand is that I can't. This is it. Those films don't exist in any higher quality than what you've already got.[/GL voice].