Sun released JavaFX 1.0 today, in a bid to take on Adobe's Flash and Microsoft's Silverlight technologies.
JavaFX, a technology by sun which will let developers write "rich internet applications" using a Java-esq language which has been in development for quite some time now has finally been released, joining rather late to the game. Also it requires it's own plugin which will be a hefty barrier to entry.
It is Sun's first Java release to include standardized, cross-platform audio and video playback code (in the form of On2 licensed codecs).
So, it will include Audio/Video support, and it is using codecs from On2. I don't think that this means the codecs are free in any sense of the term, just that Sun is paying the cost of licensing these codecs for the developers using JavaFX. Nevertheless, good codec support is always a good thing.
The lack of a Linux or Solaris release is a notable absence.
Kind of deflates the "standardized, cross-platform" claim...
The development kit currently consists of the base run-time, a NetBeans/Eclipse plug-in and a set of artifact exporters for Adobe CS 3&4."
So, the download they offer you includes the software to run the software you write, a plugin for eclipse and netbeans which are the two leading Java development environments, and some plugins for a few Adobe products to move stuff from them into the JavaFX world.