Microsoft Announces HD Photo, a New Imaging File Format With Advanced Features for Today`s Digital Photographers  More about it here.

well that sounds like good news.

I am not sure i totally understood though.  With the HD photo format be totally lossless if we want it to be... ie .. just as good as a tiff?

The best part will be when MS in 6-7 years finds out that it "forgot" to make camera manufacturers aware of the fact that they should pay a license fee for the new standard. If all of them have adapted it by then, which is absolutely possible, the $0.02 for each camera will see to that Bill Gates' retirement fund is again back in the black 

No... that was a cynical thought.... they could never.... shame on you Jorgen, for making up things like this...   

Depends.  Adobe has said something about its DNG (and tiff and Jpeg??) that it will be a royalty free format.  MS could do the same.

I am more interested in DNG being more widely supported - lossless compressed RAW with jpeg thumbnail and instructions to convert RAW all in the same file.

Didn't MS announce this a while ago??

Leaf - my understanding is that unlike JPEG, the max quality will be a lossless compression, but lower quality will be lossy - Jpeg currently only does Lossy even at max quality.