Online file hosting, using my own domain?

[Menard]

I have been looking at some different hosting plans. When it comes time to get hosting for my new site, I am going to need to do something along the lines of VPS or clustered hosting for it.

In order to save space, bandwidth, and not tie up resources with downloads and uploads, I am considering getting secondary hosting just for media files and uploads, using my own domain.

I know that several shared hosting providers frown on this, or absolutely don't permit it as you could actually begin to use some of the resources they promise but have no intention of ever delivering.

I was wondering if anybody knows of a shared hosting provider that allows their plans to be used for files hosting or a file hosting service that will allow you to use your own domain for the storage space?

[Andy]

Could you use http://www.mediafire.com/ ?

I would have thought any host with metered hosting would be suitable.

[Menard]

Could you use http://www.mediafire.com/ ?

I would have thought any host with metered hosting would be suitable.

Mediafire does not have hotlinking of files. You have to go to their site to download them.

I'm looking more for streaming media hosting.

Many shared hosting services will specifically state in their TOSs that their service is not to be used as a file hosting service or for hosting files for a website on another host.

You can get away with it on some of them if you are not really using that much space or bandwidth, but if it starts to use resources, I'd be afraid of what they would do unless they specifically allow it in their TOS.

[Andy]

I'm looking more for streaming media hosting.

Amazon S3 is probably your best net. I have noticed several Internet Marketers streaming their videos from that service. If you can establish the profit per view of a video you get then you can work out what you can afford for the hosting. Or you simply set yourself a budget and go with that in the hope of making a profit.

What kind of videos are you wanting to stream?

[Menard]

Amazon S3 is probably your best net. I have noticed several Internet Marketers streaming their videos from that service. If you can establish the profit per view of a video you get then you can work out what you can afford for the hosting. Or you simply set yourself a budget and go with that in the hope of making a profit.

What kind of videos are you wanting to stream?

I'm mostly interested in hosting audio files right now; old time radio shows, and lots of them. I am considering the potential of some classic movies from a certain theme I like (has to do with the theme of the site).

Another issue is opting for allowing video uploads from members. That certainly seems popular, but that is off into the future for now, and I'm not certain if I want to get into the headache of it; but allowing or disallowing it could also make the difference between using my site or somebody else's.

[Menard]

Been looking at some shared ffmpeg hosting plans. Interesting. May try one out, the smallest plan, on the lofts site with a youtube clone for the commercials and some other videos.

http://www.apthost.com/

http://www.hdvideohosting.com/

http://cheapwebhostinghouse.com/

http://www.bounceweb.com/shared-web-hosting.html

http://www.crayonhost.net/pages/hosting.php

http://www.imageleet.com/ffmpeg_hosting.php

[Andy]

It will be interesting to know how you get on. I found I could stream audio from hostgator before with no problems, I haven't tried video. maybe I will try it out and provide a link.

I imagine that the biggest problem may be getting a smooth delivery of the videos without out long pauses as it buffers.

This week, the http://topaffiliatechallenge.com/ started which is a daily reality TV show about affiliate marketing streamed to the web as video. I noticed that they are using Google Video.

This is the embedded code from the site:

Code:

<?php // It's not php code :-)

<embed FlashVars="autoPlay=true id="VideoPlayback" style="width:720px;height:480px" allowFullScreen="true" src="http://video.google.com/googleplayer.swf?docid=-4067705915589307975&hl=en&fs=true" type="application/x-shockwave-flash"> </embed>

?>

They were having problems with buffering at first.

[Menard]

Found this also:

http://www.dailyrazor.com/

In their package descriptions they include video and audio streaming.