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The same is not true for many old TV shows... they don't exist as digital copies yet. That's a large and prohibitive cost that likely holds back any sort of low-run, limited edition release. Selling only 10,000 copies likely wouldn't be near enough to cover the costs of actually producing the set.
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That would be true if you are talking about going back to the 35mm negative and going off of that, which is something they are not doing right now. Most of the older shows that are coming out, they are just taking whatever elements are conveniently available. Lost in Space they went off the 1-inch tapes made in the 80s. Combat, same thing, and time compressed to boot. Rhino put out Kimba the White Lion from faded old 16mm prints. Alf from Beta SP syndication copies. I Spy, likewise just came from Beta SP copies, even though some of them had cuts in them. And I know because I have off-air videotapes from the early 80s before the show got to it's current owner. So they are already putting out older shows for general release and taking what they have and not putting any money into "remastering". They are just doing straight transfers onto DVD. Believe me, if they took an older show, even one that was never put on tape for syndication (and most have been at some point), it would only add costs if they cleaned it up and color corrected it. To just do the transfer as is, which is what most of them are doing now anyway, the costs are negligible.
