In 2003 I did a consulting gig for the _Forum des Images de Paris_ who planned to convert their movie archives to digital. Back in early 2003, scanning the existing video and film stock in HD of any kind (720i/p or 1080i/p) was incredibly expensive and not generally available (most post houses simply hadn't any HD scanners or video capture cards yet, except for high-end film work); I unfortunately had to advise them to stick to SD...

But that would have destroyed the incentive - to save on rent for future decades.