I hear you very well @chekohler and actually agree with much of the sentiments you express.
As I stated in my original post the part that really gets me is that once a video has been deleted by @Dtube (or whoever does the actual deleting) it should either be removed entirely from the site or a banner (or something) should notify the user that the video is no longer being hosted. Otherwise it just looks like the video is trying to load.
The other thing that gets me is the obvious huckster quality of not making it very clear to content creators that DTube is a short-term hosting site and not a "Youtube alternative". While it is very true that many dApps suffer a woeful lack of good/useful documentation I think that something so entwined (as DTube seems to be) with Steemit should have better documentation especially in regards to it's lack of hosting longevity.
All that stuff aside I just wasted three months of my life (and my limited time and resources) on an archival project that I wrongly thought had some longevity to it. So in essence all my effort was for naught because the revenue generating aspect of both DTube and Steemit is by no means my prime motivation behind using the platforms.