It's all especially ironic when you consider that Lucas is on some film preservation board with Scorcese et al.

In regards to whether LFL is sitting on a nice OOT transfer, well, I suppose that's possible but the actual facts we've gleaned make more sense. Jim Ward noticed all the demand for the OOT on dvd but Lucas only said "fine, just so long as I don't pay a dime to remaster it." Hence they ported the laserdisc master to dvd.

We'll see the OOT restored someday, folks. Hell, if Robert A Harris owns prints of it and even offered to restore it for free, then that rainy day scenario might actually be a reality. Oh, and here's a thought. What if (bear with me here) - what if LFL does decide to hire someone like Harris to restore the OOT for the blu-ray set? They could use that person's attention to detail at restoring - while not altering a thing - as a huge selling point to people like us!

I'll say this, it's not so much a matter of forgiving GL for "not doing it before," it's that he deliberately insulted so many fans by pretending to do it. When I step back and look at the big picture (wish I could, but we're stuck with the GOUT - zing!), this wouldn't have happened if this were any other big successful studio picture, but it's not. It's one of the mere handful of films owned by Lucas, several of which happened to become some of the biggest box office hits of all time (Star Wars and Indiana Jones). At the end of the day, to hold onto his independence, maybe going back to the well an aggravating number of times really is necessary.

But that's just me giving Lucas the benefit of the doubt.

In any event, I didn't have a problem (nothing to forgive) until he fake gave us what we wanted by dumping laserdisc transfers to dvd, something fans had been doing for years.