I wouldn't dismiss the advantages to putting audio, video and lightweight control on one cable. It does help to reduce confusion and clutter. My issue is that

I wouldn't dismiss the advantages to putting audio, video and lightweight control on one cable. It does help to reduce confusion and clutter. My issue is that the goal of HDMI wasn't moving audio and video to one cable. The goal was to add encryption so that it becomes illegal to try to record off it. (whereas it's perfectly legal to record unencrypted analog + digital signals for personal use) The selling point to the public is a single, pretty cable to make everyone's lives better. We won't know the trap we've fallen into until years from now when we can't even buy a display _without_ an encrypted input. To make a device display anything I need to conform to an industry group to get a key to encrypt my data. But what if the industry group doesn't like my product and denies me a key? What if it has large 'fees' to keep out small companies? So much for a small company building the next pong, atari 2600 or apple I. So the 'single cable' is the perfect trap. It's true that today's LCD's are measured on how many HDMI ports they have. Later in life we'll be bidding for older LCD screens and projectors with analog inputs on ebay. (hopefully an exaggeration)