I hate HDMI as well. I especially hate their copy protection scheme. It often works when it's not supposed to. For instance, take a high def security camera, and convert the analog output to HDMI. Then try to use your HDMI to HD-SDI (a broadcast format that is simple to use) And it blacks the frigging screen. No copyright material involved, yet you can't use the damn thing. And they don't make an AJA box that goes directly from a high def analog security camera to HD-SDI. For some reason, they want those two worlds kept apart. I wish they would keep the politics out of our gear. And as for copy protection, it should be with the copyrighted software, not the hardware link that can't tell the difference. I don't care for how modern equipment is designed either. I guess they did away with tape loops, because they don't want you to have tape recorders. Too bad, we're gonna!
The Quadfather
P.S. I wish these things existed:
A HDMI to SDI converter that would always work, except when a DVD or blue ray player it's connected to is actually playing a copyrighted disc.
A High Def analog to HD-SDI converter. There is no reason for this not to exist.
But then, I guess these things are only important to broadcast engineers.