# Inexpensive hosting for true streaming of flv?

**URL:** <https://boards.straightdope.com/t/inexpensive-hosting-for-true-streaming-of-flv/445498>\
**Category:** Factual Questions\
**Created:** [April 15, 2008, 9:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/inexpensive-hosting-for-true-streaming-of-flv/445498 "2008-04-15T21:23:11Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 3\
**Page:** 1

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![Engywook](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/bc8723/32.png) [@Engywook](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Engywook)\
**Post date:** [April 15, 2008, 9:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/inexpensive-hosting-for-true-streaming-of-flv/445498/1 "2008-04-15T21:23:11Z")

</div>

My company is looking for an inexpensive way to serve true streaming flv (not progressive download). I know that Limelight and Akamai are the usual suspects, but:

- we don’t have _that_ much video content (around .5GB content stored, largest flv is 40MB, we usually transfer 2GB a month but at one time of the year it tends to approach 20). This really would be, I think, a job too small for them.
- We also don’t have the budget.

I’ve seen a number of companies that can meet our needs for $100/month, which would probably be acceptable. [FLV Hosting](http://www.flvhosting.com/index.php?sc=15) and [Upstream Networks](http://www.upstreamnetworks.com/home.php?page=flash-streaming) are a couple I have read about.

Anybody have any experience with these? Or have something better they can recommend?

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![lexi](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lexi/32/6806_2.png) [@lexi](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/lexi)\
**Post date:** [April 15, 2008, 10:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/inexpensive-hosting-for-true-streaming-of-flv/445498/2 "2008-04-15T22:16:19Z")

</div>

I’ve seen some PHP code for streaming flv files that would not require any special hosting outside of a normal hosting account with php if you want to go very small scale.

I think I came across information about using php to stream by googling: streaming FLV php

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![Engywook](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/bc8723/32.png) [@Engywook](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Engywook)\
**Post date:** [April 16, 2008, 4:33am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/inexpensive-hosting-for-true-streaming-of-flv/445498/3 "2008-04-16T04:33:25Z")

</div>

[QUOTE=lexi]  
I’ve seen some PHP code for streaming flv files that would not require any special hosting outside of a normal hosting account with php if you want to go very small scale.

I think I came across information about using php to stream by googling: streaming FLV php  
[/QUOTE]

Thanks for reminding me about that. I remember reading about this too, and will check it out again. I’m driving a fairly crummy rig at work - no support for PHP or any runtime server-side scripting whatsoever :eek:. But now that I’ve got to look to outside hosting anyway, it may be worth a look.

[sub]Question is, is my scale “very small” enough to work with this approach?[/sub]