Congratulations! Best VOD service in the world!

> too pricey

Prices are set by each content provider. I think they will soon realize
it's best way to make money to sell the shows at less than 1$ a piece.
Minimum price for a video is 5 cents!

> loaded with DRM

It's my favourite DRM, it's compatible with DivX DRM which means
downloaded videos will play on my DivX Certified networked DVD player,
which means I can share my downloaded videos on my local network and
play them back on my TV with my KiSS player. Or I can burn them to a
disc in the special DivX DRM way. Soon though I am sure content
providers will drop the idea of using DRM, they will see that choosing
to sell non-DRM will be perfectly profitable.

> can only play in their player

That's just for now. Google works with DivX Networks so all the shows,
even those with DRM can be used on DivX Certified devices, portable or
in the living room. That's what DivX Certification is for, to make sure
consumer electronics devices, most of the DivX DVD players, are
compatible with DivX DRM. I am sure Google can make a deal to be able
to provide the DRM in the other proprietary ipod video and psp formats.
It's just that Google has developped a DRM solution that can be
compatible with all other DRMs. Truely a special DRM!

> heavily pixelated

I have just downloaded an NBA match and a full length movie:
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-1607114503824678810

The quality is the best in any VOD services I have seen. It is DivX
640x480 resolution. And the Google Player is great at playing the file
progressively while it is downloaded. So this is Streaming and
Downloading to a specific folder on your computer at the same time.

The point is content providers can choose themselves which file format
to upload to Google Video!!! Only the free streaming video is pixelated
flash, that is because Google has to limit the used bandwidth for the
millions of free streams. Once people pay for bandwidth (be it a few
cents per GB!) then Google delivers the FULL quality that the content
provider has uploaded, as well as possible re-encodings to lower
resolutions for example for ipod/psp. So I tell you, look forward to
HiDef On-Demand (my prefered would be 720p 4mbit/s Mpeg4 or h264) for a
few cents per GB with Google.