For years we've been using RealNetworks' Helix server to serve streaming video courses.
It has been a pretty reliable solution up until now.
As of late, our support calls due to RealPlayer issues has gone from 2 or 3 a week (mostly PEBKAC or firewall issues) to up to about 10 a day.
I've been arguing to dump Real in favour of something else, but I really need to put together a proposal.
Streaming, not download and play.
Clickable bookmarks embedded in the video (Real Text);
Able to handle about 100 simultaneous connections.
Able to recognize authentication from another server on the same network.
Small, free (as in beer) client/player (i.e. No embedded itunes!)
Platform independence of client/player (player must be available to windows/mac/linux)
What should I look for when evaluating products?
The solution to this problem was iSpring player.
It's actually a robust solution, with a PowerPoint plug-in that allows you to dump a PP presentation with voice-over directly to flash.
It also has a nice quiz component, which will submit xml results to the server so that it can be stored in the database. (Caveat - Not secure for exams, but fine for quizzes.)
They're promising HTML5 video any year now, which will get us over the tablet/phone issue when it comes out.