There has been a lot of development of the ukemi techniques in the last couple of decades. Some can fall gently and noiselessly on kotegaeshi, with a special ukemi technique.
A member of our dojo, Mathias Hultman, always amazes me with his kotegeashi ukemi, which is close to how some others do it, but he has developed it himself. I guess it could be described as sort of a side-fall, instead of a forward fall.
You find it here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7gEUpMipl8Q
I include the YouTube embed code below, but I'm not sure if that works here:
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