I have the opposite problem. My new 50" Samsung flat panel TV is great, but it only has HDMI inputs (as well as internet). The problem is that for stuff I record off TV, the closed captioning will not show up when the dvd player is connected to the TV with HDMI. (The old Visio had component inputs and the closed captioning showed up with that). I thought I had solved the problem with a component (DVD Player) to HDMI converter, but the CC still doesn't show. However I'm keeping the converter because it gives better picture dimensions for these home-recorded dvd's that the player HDMI output can do.
In any case, when I was searching for a component to HDMI converter, I noticed that HDMI to component converters are also available. You just have to Google it.