Yeah when I opened my elite I knew it wasn't going to have an HDMI cable or the nice audio adapter it originally came with (which didn't matter since I was already using HDMI and made myself an adapter to use optical audio with my pro), but to only come with composite cables? Why do they even sell any of them with plain composite cables anyway? Why did they even make them...
Anyway, I sold them along with my old pro since that person didn't care, so they won't haunt my dreams.
MS just loses so much money on Xbox they're cheaping it up as much as possible with the price drop - the old power brick had metal on the connector, now it's all plastic; used to come with 8-pin (unnecessary anyway) ethernet cable, now it's 4-pin and feels cheap (and looks shorter, though I never measured it). Those were changed in the last round, and now the elites have those downgrades plus not being able to output HD out of the box, which is kind of ridiculous, especially for the "elite" console that's supposed to be the top of the line.