Since most people are curious about costs, we will try to give a cost estimate after things get settled down and we have some kind of road map. Right now things just aren't organized enough to do some kind of estimate of the cost. I completely understand why everyone wants to know the price, and I'm probably starting to sound like a broken record right?. Sorry thats the best I can do.
xlobby will use directshow, which is part of directx....its not using the actual 3D stuff in directx. If anything...moving to an internal player will lower cpu requirements...since I'm not using the sendmessage functions so often. But if you dont want to use the internal players, you dont have to...just keep using winamp or whatever you would like.
xlobby is still .net 2.0, I have not made the jump to .net 3.0 yet....I don't plan on doing that any time soon because I'm too busy with fixing bugs and adding features. .net 3.0 will have huge benefits for xlobby, but its to early to do it right now. What you might see is some addon 3d stuff that uses .net 3.0....but again that will be optional and it wont be a requirement.