[OT] Best Flash/QT streaming provider

[Paul Orrock]

Thomas Busch wrote:
> Hi all,
> 
> I know this is off-topic but can anyone recommend a
> good UK-based streaming provider to stream high-quality
> videos ? This is meant for a film production company
> that needs to stream examples of their work (music
> videos, company showreel, short films, etc). 

I'm curious as to why they need to stream them ? Most players now start 
playing the file before it's downloaded, so unless you're talking about 
a large volume of people accessing one file constantly then I'd just 
have them available to download off the site. You just need a server 
with fast (low hop) access to the linx backbone. One of our clients
(http://www.monday9am.tv) serve all of their videos in this way from one 
of our servers.

> Also what encoding do you recommend ? It seems that
> everyone is going for Flash these days.

Monday9am use flash for several reasons, one of which is that it's 
harder to copy a flash embedded movie that it is to right-click -> save 
as a wmv or mpg movie. Flash also plays while downloading the rest of 
the video.

regards,

Paul