Mike O said:

I know we've been over this ad nausem, but since the search function and forum setup here are so bad, I'll ask again anyway, didn't Lucas hack up the OOT negatives so badly that restoring them would take considerable effort?

No. Well, for Lucas any amount of effort greater than "none" was too much, but for the rest of the world it's not a big deal. The material exists. Reconstructing an episode of Star Trek next generation from the raw dailies is a bigger hassle and they just did that 170 times.