I'm only too well aware of the Printworker etc and have seriously thought of buying one. Problem is the clients just don't want to pay for the additional cost of doing work at that quality. I could even probably get my hands on a full blown telecine for the asking. Problem with that is they're expensive to run, tubes are about $10K and they only come with S8 gate.
I'm slowly improving the kit that I have and I've been looking to replace the CCDs which will make the biggest differnce. But again 90% of the film I'm given is just sad, very few people bought decent cameras, a lot of the stock wasn't very good, some of the processing was substandard and using the cmaera like you would a garden hose was common practice.
If I do come across something worth better treatment I suggest they send it off to a local shop with a Cintel telecine, very few want to pay for that kind of work. I've been able to compare the results of a Cintel transfer against the gear that we use. All I can say is the quality of what's on the film meant you just couldn't see the difference.
Mind you if I had the time I'd be buying a good Super 8 camera, Kodak have the stock back in production, the most obvious way to get that elusive 'film look'!
If you do know anyone with film lying around, please get them to check it. Kodak at one stage were lubricating the film with some organic wax, probably seemd like a good idea at the time but with those cardboard boxes and paper envelopes the stuff grows fungus like crazy, need surgical gloves to handle some of it! Surprisingly the older stuff seems OK, I think it was just a period of about ten years they were doing this. Even if they don't want the film transfered it needs cleaning to get the wax off.