I still get a nervous/angry twitch whenever no MHL/HDMI is mentioned
But IIRC, even if it could do 1080p-out via HDMI, it'd prolly be too weak.
I think 802.11an + DLNA will turn-out to be our best option for 720p/1080p-out
(actual playback done on the DLNA client)

Agreed -- playback of HD video should be pushed to the HD client. The only time I put HD video on my phone is when I'm using it as a USB drive for my TV. (Many modern TVs can handle a decent variety of video codecs -- my Samsung certainly can.)

There are many people out there who watch videos on their mobile phone as a primary media consumption device. (during long train/bus commutes etc) There are many who never care about DLNA because of this.

Obviously, many people download their videos off the internet. (even ripping stuff off youtube) Many are HD videos these days. Last thing most people want to do is re-encode it so that their phone can play it. (SD stuff on the net are mostly 640x360 or worse which looks bad on our WVGA+ screens and also is usually coupled with lower bitrate audio which doesn't sound as good) This is the same for Youtube videos. N9 doesn't play 720p youtube videos. (they are high profile H264) So we have to end up watching lesser quality video (with lower bitrate, heavier compression) and worse quality audio (lower bitrate AAC). So you think this is acceptable because our N9 doesn't have HD resolution screen? I think not.

Also, with 64GB on my N9, I can fit more than enough HD videos so who cares if it uses up more space. I just don't want to waste time re-encoding. That's where the N9 fails miserably and is not a good media consumption device for many people out there. Hardware is just way too weak.

Only mobile phone SoC out there which can play everything you can find on the net are Samsung ones from my experience. SGS1, old Tab 7" (and soon 7.7"), SGS2 and Galaxy Note can play everything including high profile H264 with CABAC, some weird combination of video/audio codecs in weird container blah blah. No matter what, they can play it. (Tegra2, all Qualcomm, most TI OMAP SoCs cannot do this) It's not about the CPU/GPU but the DSP they use with it. So it's funny as Samsung's Galaxy Tab 10.1" which uses Tegra2 is much worse than their other devices for video playback. Not sure if Galaxy Nexus will be able to do it with OMAP4. (I've never tried an OMAP4 phone) Maybe people with LG Optimus 3D can answer this or google to find out.

Samsung's default video player is also awesome. (brightness control within the player, resume, child-lock function etc) N9's video player is not good at all. So I hope the developer does improve it.

I personally would never use my ph as my primary display upon watch to watch HD content...
But it'd be nice to have the option to stream that content to a DLNA client, that handles anything you throw at it on a massive Plasma/LCD.
Or to switch to mass-storage & have my media-player/DLNA client, play content that's on my phone.
The option to play HD-like content on the ph itself would be handy sometimes too, if I'm traveling etc.

Exactly. Some people do this every day. 2-3 hours a day to and from work or university. It's also more convenient having 1 for all device than carry multiple devices. Nokia is forcing me to possibly get another device for my media consumption needs. Current and even soon to be released WP7 phones can't even play xvid videos so that doesn't make it any better either.

I was hoping a successor to N900 would be all that but it ended up being the N9 which isn't any more powerful than the N900 except for the more RAM. (my N900 can play the same HD videos as N9 now and I run it at 1.1Ghz anyways so my MicroB doesn't render web pages any slower) After nearly 2 years of waiting, we get a hardware that isn't that much newer. Bit upset really. Heck, even my N8 is better than the N9 in many ways. e.g. Can play up to certain high profile H264 videos, HDMI out, USB OTG, MicroSD, better Nokia Maps navigation (with traffic, spoken street names etc), better camera with 2 stage button, WhatsApp and widgets etc.

I guess I was expecting Nokia to go out with a bang for their supposedly last Harmattan device. (U8500 SoC etc) I was too optimistic I guess.

802.11an + DLNA & mass-storage will be a replacement for HDMI for me, albeit less than ideal.
USB-OTG may yet come, although it would've been nice if it was "official".
mSD, outlined previously why it's not as much of a "biggy" as it seems, if one forks-out a bit extra for the 64GB.
Weak DSP for video playback cannot excuse, weak CPU/GPU cannot excuse, Maps omissions cannot excuse.
Power/stand-by button will be remapped as the shutter button...
No widgets mildly sux, there's a potential solution, but it will have to "rely on the community" again.
There seems be lots of room for improvement when it comes to certain shots with the N9's cam.
Hopefully they'll aggressively work on that over the next two or three release.

Yeah I remember when the U8500 was rumored. It baffles me why they didn't just make the leap to OMAP4.
I'm hoping that somehow in the not too distant future, Maemo (or a cousin) lives on in the Razr & the Nexus.
Wishful thinking. Wasn't there work done with MeeGo-Core for OMAP4????

A couple things to note: first, the "High-Definition" in HD video relates to the picture resolution, not the video compression bitrate. Indeed, a 720p HD video is still called a High-Definition video whether it is severely compressed to the point of unwatchability or totally uncompressed. (Most of the HD video I find on the net has a bitrate lower than DVDs!)

Second, the resolution of an LCD screen is fixed. If your screen has 854x480 pixels, you will be watching video at 854x480 resolution. A 720p (1280x720 pixel) or 1080p (1920x1080) video shown on this screen will obviously have to be down-scaled, or you'll only be able to see one corner of the picture at a time. Similarly, a 640x350 video will have to be up-scaled, or you will be seeing a tiny picture on just a part of your screen. All this down-scaling (or up-scaling) wastes CPU power (or whatever hardware you are using), and must naturally distort the native video to some degree.

What you want is a maximum quality picture with minimum distortion. Simply cramming data onto the machine that is inevitably going to be thrown away during the down-scaling process is not the best way to do this. The best way is to use a video encoding system to re-encode a high-resolution, low compression source video into the native resolution of your device at the lowest compression level (or highest bitrate) that your device can handle.

Again, I use handbrake for this. I use it both for the HD videos I get from the net (high-res, but heavily compressed) and for my library of DVDs (standard-def, but low compression), to squeeze the best quality I can get out of my source material before transferring it to the phone. Because Handbrake doesn't have to try to decode and re-scale the video in real time, and gives you fine control over the bitrate it will use, it can produce a video optimized for the phone that will, in fact, surpass the quality you would get by trying to run the native source video on the device.

Comparing bitrate doesn't give a fair 'picture' these days.

Modern codecs can do more packaged into less.

You can get compressed but technically lossless etc, whilst a HD video at top spec DVD bitrate (e.g. 7000 to 8000 kbps) might look very very good depending on the codec.

it's worth remembering that these things keep getting better so adequate support for new formats is pretty useful.

Wait, my 2yrs old n900 can now play 720p videos and n9 can't? That's kinda hilarious, isn't it?

You are hilarious!