Now that you've made your own movies, you are going to need a place to show them off. Sure, you could write them out to DVD and then mail them to your friends and relatives, but that's a real pain. The Internet provides an easier way: Just upload your video to an online video-hosting service, and all of your friends and neighbors can watch your latest masterpiece. I tested out several of these sites by uploading a sample video (featuring a number of cute kittens) to each one. Here are my thoughts, though keep in mind that this isn't a comprehensive review.

YouTube: The 800-pound gorilla of the online video-hosting world (albeit now a gorilla with a leash that's being held by Google), YouTube is simple to use: You just upload the video in any format (as long as the file size is less than 100MB and the video is less than 10 minutes long), and the site converts the video to Flash format and offers it to viewers. They can then watch it through the YouTube site, or you can easily incorporate the video into your own site with a couple of lines of HTML.

The downside of YouTube is that it offers the video at only one size, and the quality is often poor, especially if the video has already been compressed. Also, posting a private video is a pain, because you have to post it and then invite people to watch it. And if the invitees aren't YouTube users, they have to join the site, a process that could confuse your Aunt Doris. Here's my sample video.

YouTube best for: Exhibitionists and viral video makers

Google Video: Though Google now owns YouTube, the search giant says it is going to keep running its own separate video service. And that's a good thing, as Google Video is superior to YouTube in many ways. Posting a video is just as easy as on YouTube (especially if you use the Google Video Uploader program), and the image quality is better. Incorporating the videos into your own site is a snap, and you can vary the size of the video window to fit in with your Web design.

Unfortunately, you can't password protect or otherwise block casual access to your videos, but you can post them as "unlisted"--which means they'll be excluded from the Google video searches. Anybody with the URL can watch the video, though, so it's not truly private. Here's a sample video.

Google Video best for: People wanting to incorporate videos into their Web site

Stage6: The new kid on the block, Stage6 is run by the people behind the DivX video format. So, not surprisingly, this new hosting service uses the DivX format. This means that the quality is good, and you can easily upload videos shot in high-def or wide-screen format, preserving the wide-screen aspect ratio for your viewers.

The downside of this site is that the viewer has to download and install the DivX Web Player software to watch your videos. That doesn't take long, though. You can upload the videos either directly from the Web site or through the DivX player. If you do it through the Web site, you have to convert the video yourself, but the software is free. The service is still being built, and it is occasionally buggy: It took me several attempts to upload this sample video.

Stage6 best for: Those looking for top video quality

Grouper: Sony recently bought Grouper, so we'll probably be seeing a lot more of this service with Sony camcorders in the near future. It takes a slightly different approach than the others: Though you can upload videos through the Web site, the site encourage you to use the Grouper software instead. It works pretty well, and it automatically converts and uploads the video for you, straight from your video editing program. It also allows you to download videos directly to a PDA or an iPod.

But Grouper lacks the simplicity of the other services, and the image quality of the sample video I uploaded wasn't great: There are some obvious compression problems.

Grouper best for: Those looking for a simple video-hosting system that does it all

Blip.tv: Blip.tv is proving to be popular with video bloggers because of its simple copyright policy: It makes no claims on your content (most of the other sites either grab your copyright or try and impose some sort of nasty license agreement, a problem I'll discuss in a future column). In fact, many of this site's users offer their videos under a creative commons license, which allows you to download and reuse the video.

But the drawback to Blip.tv is that you have to encode your video to QuickTime or Windows Media formats yourself. The exception to this is if you use the free video editing program Windows Movie Maker: Blip offers a plug-in for this application that lets you publish videos from within the program itself. Here's a sample video.

Blip.tv best for: Serious videographers and video bloggers who don't mind doing their own encoding

So that's my takes on five of the most popular video-hosting sites. My favorite right now is probably Stage6; though it still has some rough edges, I love the high quality of the video and the good free encoding tools that it provides. But Blip.tv is a great choice if you are planning on posting videos regularly and have the tools to encode the video yourself. There are plenty of others (including some that you can use to make money from your videos if they are popular enough; Scott Kirsner has put together a great list of such sites).

Note: A couple of columns back, I mentioned the new Canon XH A1 camcorder, and said that it had a removable lens. It actually doesn't: I was thinking of the Canon XL H1. My apologies for the confusion.

Richard Baguley is pretty sure that he uploaded the purpose of life to a video-sharing site somewhere, but he can't remember which one. You can e-mail him here. He blogs about camcorders and video at CamcorderInfo.com.