Are they moving away from the V8's to something else?

Nevermind... wasn't paying attention enough to what they were saying during the video. Changing to a V6 next season.

The V6 turbo is intended to develop technology that's more applicable to road cars, rather than the previous F1 approach of just spinning the engines faster and making the components thinner and lighter. They are also introducing much more restrictive fuel economy measures (via mandated maximum flow rate to the engine rather than the current limit of as much as you can carry at the start of the race). Also, as the video mentioned, the energy recovery system is going to be more integrated next season.

The new engines specs sound, superficially at least, similar to Indy car engines... I wonder if they will be close enough to allow any crossover?

The first clips of the new engines being fired up have already started to show up on yt:

*related=http://videosift.com/video/First-sound-clip-of-Renault-2014-F1-engine

First audio clip of Renault 2014 F1 engine has been added as a related post - related requested by oritteropo.

I imagine that the manufacturers are happier putting some R&D money that benefits them in the marketplace as well as racing.

The team have posted an extended version of the interview with Andy Cowell, where he says a few interesting things including that the current engine makes more than 750bhp, compared to about 200 odd for a similar capacity road car engine, and that the main focus of the new regulation engine is conversion efficiency which really wasn't a big consideration for the current v8 specification when they were designed.

Moving this video to oritteropo's personal queue. It failed to receive enough votes to get sifted up to the front page within 2 days.

*beg

Sending this video to Beggar's Canyon to plea for a little attention - beg requested by original submitter oritteropo.