Phil, your video for using Blender and Luxrender is awesome. It's the best free alternative out there. In any case you CANNOT convince me that blender interface is good (neither the upcoming 2.5....)! ;-)

An PaQ, for me too 3DCoat cannot be considered a renderer!

I have it and I use it with moi model for UVs and texturing, but after I pass to another render engine. And for a low cost pipeline there are now some real alternative to the free couple above mentioned. As already said Octane for GPU and Thearender for CPU it's very nice indeed. Don't forget Numenus Augenblick, it's in free beta now and seem promising.