Respectfully disagree - codifying existing practice and getting the browser developers to buy into incremental improvements to the status quo is what got us to HTML4 and the original CSS specs, which I would suggest is basically the last time non-trivial improvements to the standards used to deliver web pages saw wide-spread adoption.

In contrast, whenever the language designers have tried to forge a path without involving the people who will write the web pages and develop the software the new standards have been largely ignored - for example: HTML3.0 and XHTML (and I write that as an XHTML fan).

It is intended as a consumer protection measure - it is only legal to offer to sell beer by the pint, half-pint, or third-pint (a rare measure, though it has become popular at real-ale festivals in recent years) because it makes it trivial to compare pricing from one establishment to the next. It is more difficult to gauge value for money (especially when tipsy!) if you've got to look at the menu or a notice to find out how many centi-litres (or whatever) are supposed to be in a bar's beer glasses and then do mental arithmetic to compare that with the place down the road where the measures are different.

The fact that the mandated measure is pints rather than half-litres is mostly down to the fact that the laws regulating these things are very old (though the fact that there would be a "little Englander" backlash against changing the traditional measures has no doubt put governments off revising and updating the legislation!).

What if the original poster has an high definition display which doesn't have HDMI inputs (many such "HD ready" TV sets were sold before HDMI was standardised a couple of years go)? The fact that he/she checked the capabilities of the analogue component output with the manufacturer and the seller before purchasing suggests this might well be the case ...