NLS will charge *nothing* for their players, just as now. The transition to full digital books (stored on flash cards or downloaded from the NLS site) will be complete by 2012. Cassettes will be around for awhile after that but no new books will be translated to cassettes after that date. The specifications for the NLS encrypted digital books will be available to other manufacturers that can come out with their own NLS compatible player - you will have to pay for those. Dan