moviefreakedmind said:
By the way, I've always interpreted Lucas' lie that the 1993 tape was the best available source as meaning that it was the only source that needed ZERO clean up. Even the best preserved IP would have needed some work put into it before releasing it. That's just my take though
Assuming that they didn't want to go back to film, the 1993 D-1s might have been all they had available at the time.
I know for certain that the D-1 tapes used for the JSC LD release were already in private hands by 2006.