I've been an Imageshack.us member for quite some time now and never had a problem with viruses or hacks or such. Also keeps a history of all my uploads with a fast upload button on the toolbar so I just pick a pic and send it. Not as all-out nice as photobucket but much less crapped up with a bad UI.
I just rip the stupid VRO into an MP4 video with my converter. Works well enough for me and I don't have to hassle with that very buggy DVDMovieAlbum thing. I have a Panasonic VDR-M70, I dearly wish it supported firewire because my compy can't read RAM discs.