SilverWook said:
Or a penny pinching measure. You'd have to be in a cave to not know HD was going to be the new standard at the time.
Unless it had something to do with not wanting to restore the unaltered footage.
Maybe the reason the footage is currently unavailable is because it is being restored at the moment. I don't know if that really makes sense at all but who knows at this point? Nothing regarding Lucasfilm's business practices makes any kind of sense.