I understand completely why he's not releasing it, and I support him all the way. Kevin Brownlow continued to restore Abel Gance's Napoleon for decades, even while Francis Ford Coppola and the other rights holders prevented him from making it available to the public. Now, all parties have worked things out and it's finally going to be screened in Oakland, CA this coming spring. I think Mike has the same general mindset - he says it's not being made to sit on a hard drive, it's going to be "available to the future" when circumstances change. He calls it an investment, and I totally agree.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XaDlP-kmzWk

This is a detail from the Mos Eisley shot he just posted. I think it's clear now that he's working from a high-quality (possibly IB Technicolor) print scanned in 4K.

I tell you, this detail-recovery thing looks amazing, and I get how it basically works. In a stationary shot like this every frame of a print has a different part of the negative detail in it, and he's taking all that detail and combining it back together.

Pardon me if I sound like a sycophant, I'm not, I'm just amazed by what he's doing and I support it.