Droid, glad to see you're on board with Blu-Ray. I agree with your brief assessment of Component vs HDMI. One of my TVs is a Mitsubishi 65" Rear-projection with no HDMI connectors. I use a component cable and it still looks stunning. I've compared the same disc on another of my TVs (HDMI) in the house and can't tell the difference.
I saw that you mentioned HDMI bypasses some built-in security stuff which I think is a positive, but one drawback I've encountered is that upscaling of standard DVDs can't be done via component.