@GrandMasterBirt: Personally, I am not now and never will touch Blu-Ray. I don't trust Sony to have any qualms about screwing everyone over. I also think that, before Blu-Ray gets majority market share, downloadable videos will be widely enough accessible to completely replace my media players for 99% of my viewing. </rant>

This assumes that nothing will come along to challenge or supersede h.264. If nothing else, we can hope that Theora will get more developers, at which point the whole browser-battle will resume, and the same solution will likely arise: further delay in fees, or switching to a free codec (remember, Theora will have improved in the meantime).

When was the last time you watched a YouTube video?

Exactly. However how is that any different than Blue-Ray? Same crap, everyone is moving to BR and sony wants every disk burned to have a license unless its personal use, not to mention a whole lot of restrictions like by 2012 all non-hi-def input won't be supported, and diminished quality for non-hi-def inputs today intentionally even though it is unnecessary.