Any Advances in Fixing Tracking Digitally?

[ubertrout]

So, about 15 years ago I got a copy of a miniseries my mom worked on during the 1970s. It was never commercially released and there's no copies in libraries. It took a fair bit of work to get, and I won't be able to get another transfer done or access the tapes myself.

So, naturally, the content owner sent me DVDs of the program with serious video tracking problems baked in, with scan lines cascading down the screen and the picture cut in half (or other fractions) with the top part on the bottom and so forth. At the time I asked around and people said there wasn't much I could do. It feels like this should be different now, with all the advances in upscaling and everything else, but I haven't seen much encouraging. It feels like a problem which should be solvable in software, is it just not a problem of real interest to people given that making a new transfer is generally possible? I feel like the question has come up a lot over the years.