That's hardly the case. The low-res texture stuff is widely used in emulators (both mobile and on PCs) - after all, that's exactly where it was meant to be use

That's hardly the case. The low-res texture stuff is widely used in emulators (both mobile and on PCs) - after all, that's exactly where it was meant to be used. The seam carving (the "least interesting line removal" thing) is now a major feature of Photoshop (called content-aware scale) and has become really well integrated (I hear there are attempts to do in video as well). The fact that you don't see this tech in your line of work doesn't mean it's not out there.