I think that it's a reasonable rant under the circumstances. On the one hand, HDMI is a concept that offers some clear benefits. On the other hand, the way the HDMI has been deployed has been messy and confusing.

I'd really like to have seen HDMI take a somewhat different approach to their licensing and require that any HDMI product include a clear indication of the HDMI version - to the point that it was integrated into the silk-screened logo on the front panel. The options would have been HDMI v1.0 (video plus DD/DTS bitstream audio and PCM stereo audio), HDMI v1.1 (video plus DD/DTS bitstream audio and multichannel PCM audio), HDMI v1.2 (same as v1.1 plus DSD bitstream), HDMI v1.3 (which would only be allowed if the integration included support for DD+, TrueHD, and DTS-HD MA bitstreams), and a separate logo for HDMI Video (for all those receivers and processors that have included HDMI switching without any audio support). That would all of course be accompanied by a short, concise, and readily available brochure from HDMI explaining the differences to help educate consumers. Alas, this idea lives in the same dream world where DTS came up with a less tedious name for their lossless format than "DTS-HD Master Audio," and where the consumer electronics giants and studios realized that an HD format war was unnecessary and standardized on one HD format. Meanwhile here in the real world, we enjoy HDMI's loosely-identified version stew, the format war continues, and I keep find myself typing the "abbreviation" DTS-HD MA.