Hi, I was looking for a video portal (WebTV) solution for a small customer that does not want to deal with CDNs and things like that and all I found were very expensive solutions or required high monthly payment.

Today I found a hosted software called "Simple Web TV" ( http://www.simple-webtv.com ). Looks very interesting and I think I will give it a try BUT does anybody know anything about it or is using it? What hosting solution could you recommend for a solution like that, considering my client won´t have a very high traffic.

Thanks.

Ruder.

I have never seen or heard about it, but it looks very well programmed (from user-end side). As far as hosting solution, it seems like it doesn't require anything special:

PHP version: 4 or 5.
MySQL database version: 4 or 5.
Assign write and execution permissions if necessary.
Modify upload and post limits, enable some necessary PHP functions (if required).

These are very common to any hosting provider. The key things, perhaps, come to connectivity speed and bandwidth. Make sure your client has at least enough bandwidth to serve all those videos he wants in high quality. Also, make sure the connectivity is fast enough to load the videos. Nothing is more annoying than having to wait for a video to download... even on product website a 7-9 second video was interrupted because it didn't download in time.

Interesting site ... I also experienced a delay on the product website and my download speed at this workstation is 8.5Mbps.

Thank you for your answers.

Do either of you know of a "mid-range" solution? I mean, I don't want to pay WebTV prices however I would obviously want excellent quality and no delays. I am in the process of ordering a nice size VPS so that should be sufficient for anything I need.

I did not experience the delays you are talking about (maybe 1sec between clips at most) but I am in Europe and this company is located in Europe too, maybe this is the cause of the delays for you. They have a free trial, why don´t you give it a try on your server and tell us how it works for you?

I am in the process of convincing my client to set up a hosting for its WebTV, and plan to try this "Simple Web TV", then I will share my experience with you.