I always think serving your own stuff is most professional. And especially now days, the bandwidth situation isn't much of an issue anymore. And if you actually want to still try and get business from YT, then you can still do that as well... Just not have to depend on it and all it's quirks. Plus, there's the online public domain attitude, that anything on YT is up for grabs... Copyright or not.

If you host it your self you wont have THIS VIDEO IS NO LONGER AVAILABLE warning which I have on hundreds of my pages!

When the YouTube user blocks the embedded video later on, it looks bad on your site!

I am also in the process of using a Video module to upload my own videos; probably in a few weeks/months.

This is something I've been trying to work out as well.
What is current best practice? Hosting a flash player on the site, with SM tools, url grab, etc, and then also uploading another copy to YT to increase exposure?

If you go with embedded be sure not to come into dailypress' situation :THIS VIDEO IS NO LONGER AVAILABLE , so choose carefully the videos embedded; better would be to host the videos yourself, not such a difficult issue to take care of these days. :)

Don't underestimate the value of Search on YouTube.

A large part of Google's search volume is currently coming from YouTube. I often use it to search for demo's of working machinery equipment. It is much faster than searching through the regular search engines and hoping that manufacturers have video's on their site that I am looking for.

Topically, my partner and I were having just this discussion yesterday in relation to her work site. She currently has a couple of embedded videos from YouTube users that provide excellent examples of her work. Visitors/potential customers seem to like them on her site, and so it would make sense to have more video offerings.

In our discussions we reached the conclusion that YouTube is a much better option than self-hosting. Exactly as lammert points out above, Google indexing of YouTube videos, and YouTube traffic itself offers the potential of a much wider audience that on-site visitors alone.

Also, developing a work-related YouTube channel could prove very useful for marketing purposes. I know many have been doing this for a long time, but it's a novel world to us :-)

YouTube is a serious black hole of tangents. Myself, I cannot stay focused when working with it. I find myself two hours later, lost and video'ed to death with no recollection of why I went there. So I'm in a bit of agreement with the idea of dilution, it's designed that way, like a Casino has no clocks, YouTube has no exit door.

And that, really, is what you want, for them to exit and come back to your site.

I question whether it's as good as it "could be" for the above reason, people are there to look at videos, and honestly, when you're on a video watching fix, do you ever take time to read the side content, click any of the links? About all that seems to interest most people are the comments and the related videos.

I'd do both. If you don't have the bandwidth for on-site video, just embed the Y.T. videos on your site (using SWF object, of course!) and the related's will just have to be something you live with. If you do have bandwidth, use your own player.

But leave the ones you have on YT where they are. Whether this gives you any duplicate content penalties I don't know, but if you have them on your site, sending them off to Y.T. to view your video would be like launching a capsule into cyber space. They won't come back (until their boss makes them come back.)

...like a Casino has no clocks, YouTube has no exit door.

Easy, just click your browser 'home' button 3 times... :-)

What is current best practice? Hosting a flash player on the site, with SM tools, url grab, etc, and then also uploading another copy to YT to increase exposure?

When I put a video on a website I first convert it to a .swf file which plays in all modern browsers and thus no need for a "player".

i thought i saw recently that you could "opt-out" of these related videos at the end ?

Yes, one can opt out of Youtube displaying related videos at the conclusion of an embedded video. Simply append "&rel=0" after the video ID number in your embed code.

If one sticks to only embedding self-uploaded videos per digitalv's plan, "this video is no longer available" shouldn't be a problem. barring being flagged for a Youtube TOS violation.

Host the embedded videos on your site yourself + put the videos on youtube. After all if other videos are related to your video, your video is related to others too - and shown at the end of the videos as related, which brings addtional attention to your videos.