Microsoft on every DVD player?

There were already a few high-definition DVD discs and players using Microsoft's new WMV HD format, discs and players being shown off at this past January's Consumer Electronics Show, and now we've learned that a steering committee for the DVD Forum, the industry body that governs the DVD format, just granted provisional approval to use the technology as one of the mandatory playback standards (along with MPEG2 and H.264) for high-definition DVD video players. This means that when high-definition DVD players finally hit it big, it's most likely they'll have to support the Windows Media Video 9 format. This doesn't mean that Microsoft is going to suddenly control the market for HD-DVDs, but it does mean they're going to pick up a nice royalty payment for every high-definition DVD
player that gets sold with their codec built-into it.