We get a contract-free iPhone, and for us in Europe we have one months before an official release here. We knew what we were paying for and, as you said, we could afford it.
There sure are a lot of whiney little gits out there.
I've been meaning to buy a 40"+ monstrosity for quite some time now, but Irish retailers seem to be incredibly slow (perhaps understandably so) at getting full HD 1080p sets in stock. Don't get me wrong, 720p/1080i is a huge step up from SDTV's, but since I use my Xbox 360 a lot it'd be great to view things at 1920 x 1080.
As for hooking your Macbook Pro up to an HDTV with HDMI, DVI, unlike HDMI doesn't carry audio, just video so if you want sound you'll probably need to pump out from the line-out on the MBP via RCA or something.