To some, the whole "if you're not any good at a game, pay money for a crutch" is a bug, to others, its a feature.
Some of your claims are weird. I'm not sure what makes a HDMI cable magically know its supposed to be harder to plug in because its connecting a PC rather than a console.
Knowing you can plug a PC into a TV isn't something most people know about. You need special graphics cards or adapters and have to deal with weird resolutions and oversized images.
HN is generally overly pessimistic about the skills of the general public and overly optimistic about their own. Furthermore these are gamers, well not real gamers but console FPS players, but still a technological leap past the average reality TV viewer.
I scrolled around tigerdirect just for fun. It appears you'd have to work pretty hard to buy a video card that doesn't have HDMI out.
As a secret knowledge that horse left the barn a decade or so ago. Too many people have sat in meetings/classes where some drone plugs his laptop into a TV projector and reads a powerpoint to the bored sleepy audience, and calls it a great presentation.
I am certain its possible to find a way to make it not work, for either consoles or PCs.
The point is if consoles aren't any better than PCs anymore because not only are they no longer less of a PITA, they're actually now more of a PITA than a PC, even an extremely minor hassle at the hardware level results in the PC beating the console as an overall gaming system.
The ogliopoly or whatever of console mfgrs results in anti-consumer actions that suck. The PC world is hardly perfect, just better off.
Some of your claims are weird. I'm not sure what makes a HDMI cable magically know its supposed to be harder to plug in because its connecting a PC rather than a console.