I tried the component that calls itself "the first video plugin for Joomla" and got the impression that they had abandoned the support in favor of developing a pretty interface that I could barely get working. So I searched and found this plugin, and wow, it's pretty amazing.

The developers call it an "alpha" product, but I've had no troubles with it at all, other than minor issues that are resolved quickly. The developers really know their stuff, and their support forum has what I consider an unprecedented level of support for such an inexpensive pro version.

I am using this to develop my wife's educational resources web site, wingsed.com, and it looks awesome, works great.

"That other" video component used to break the themes I was trying. This one seems to fit in a lot better.

The development is obviously on going, as there are frequently between-version nightly releases that give an idea of some of what's being planned.

I can't say enough good things about this component and I highly recommend it.

This component shows a lot of promise, but there's enough down side to it that I've pretty much decided to abandon it for hwdMediaShare. The HWD plugin is not as pretty or as well developed yet, but has none of the problems that I found with this one. I paid for the "pro" version because it's the only version that has pre- and post-roll ads.

Biggest problem for me is that the only pre- and post-roll advertising solution offered by Seyret is one that requires you to share your profits with a system called Longtail. And I find it offensive frankly that they don't tell you up front that you have no way to keep 100% of your profits.

Here's what the Longtail page says before you sign up:

"Our AdSolution is completely self-serve. It allows you to embed any ad tag from any ad network into your website's media player. Simply sign up, login to our Dashboard and you can be running pre-roll, overlay mid-roll and post-roll ads in minutes!"

But when you sign up, you are given three options:

1. Longtail gets half your ad space and keeps 100% of the profits.

2. Longtail gets all your ad space and shares the profit with you.

3. You use 100% of your ad space using whatever ads you like, but you have to pay them a percentage.

Considering that every video component I've seen lets you set up your own pre- and post-roll ads, I can only see this forced use of Longtail as a very negative down side of using what is otherwise a pretty good Joomla component.

I also found that there were problems uploading videos or even adding them. I added two or three videos from youtube, and the system stopped accepting them entirely after that. This is probably an issue that can be resolved, but the forced sharing of my video ad space makes it not worth looking in to.