OT: How does this video hosting deal sound?

craftech wrote on 3/18/2006, 7:43 AM
I use PhotoBucket Free for hosting photos. They enable you to easily link or insert photos as part of most internet posts on forums that allow it, and now they have a video hosting service they plan to introduce for 3months for $9 or a year for $25. Can anyone tell me if this sounds like a good deal? This service never spams me nor does any other suspicious thing that I am aware of.

John

Comments

Chienworks wrote on 3/18/2006, 11:47 AM
That looks like a splendiferous deal! The only thing i see is that it states "3 minute clips". I'm not sure how they determine the length since that can vary greatly with size depending on the bit rate, but it sounds like it might be somewhat limiting on what you can store there. At 512Kbps though 1GB should store a hundred or so 3 minute clips.
johnmeyer wrote on 3/18/2006, 11:55 AM
Who makes 3 minute clips? That sounds a little short to me.
Sol M. wrote on 3/19/2006, 3:11 AM
The price sounds right, but whenever a company states "unmetered bandwidth", I'd defnitely think twice about signing up. Simply put, there is no such thing as unlimited or unmetered bandwidth. Hosting companies use these terms to put potential buyers more at ease. Not to say this is what photobucket is doing, but if you use a lot of bandwidth/CPU cycles, expect to see some hefty bandwidth charges, or get your account locked until the following month.

If you want to post videos for viewing/download from the web, then I'd recommend looking into a real hosting company. Then, there wouldn't be any restriction on the length/size of video file you wanted to post. For video, you really want a lot of bandwidth. Also, make sure the hosting company you sign up with is very clear regarding bandwidth usage/extra fees AND CPU usage caveats in their terms of service.

There was a thread here not too long ago about hosting companies people use. You might want to search for that as there was a fair amount of information on different hosting companies people use.
craftech wrote on 3/19/2006, 3:55 AM
There was a thread here not too long ago about hosting companies people use. You might want to search for that as there was a fair amount of information on different hosting companies people use.
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I participated in it. This wasn't intended to be a replacement for a larger hosting company. Some people were also asking about Google video hosting awhile ago. I thought that since this company is legit (I have been using their free service a few years with no spam) that this would be a good deal for hosting short video clips.

John
dibbkd wrote on 3/19/2006, 4:17 AM
I host with LunarPages, they aren't specific to "video hosting", but you can put anything you want up there.

You get up to 5GB storage for $7.95/month, and bandwidth is 400GB/month.

LunarPages.com
Jim H wrote on 3/19/2006, 9:28 AM
I started using YouTube several months ago. At first I didn't like the YouTube logo they overlaid on the videos, but they stopped doing that. They have a 100mb size limit but for some reason last week, they imposed a 10 minute run time limit. Many users are up in arms over that decision, the logic of which, is not clear. Run time does not equal Bandwidth, so why limit it?

Some users are moving to getdemocracy.com. You need to install their player so I have not tried it. Anyone use this service?
goshep wrote on 3/19/2006, 9:57 AM
Didn't read into it much but here's another possiblilty:
https://upload.video.google.com/
craftech wrote on 4/24/2006, 8:42 AM
Just a heads-up for anyone who may have been interested in this video hosting deal.

I signed up for the Photobucket advanced option at $9.00 for three months in order to see how the video hosting service would be.

Nowhere does it tell you that all uploaded files will be converted to .flv and will require Flashplayer 8. It will accept anything up to 5 minutes long and not over 100MB in filesize or it will be truncated.
The quality IMO is awful. I uploaded a .wmv file, then a .mov file and the resulting flash movie looked terrible.

Not a great money loss and they have always been great at hosting photos, but after the three months is up I will go back to Photobucket Free.
craftech wrote on 4/24/2006, 9:06 AM
Didn't read into it much but here's another possiblilty:
https://upload.video.google.com/
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Same thing (although in this case Google states it) - Flash Player 7.
The bad thing about flash is that besides being ugly, lots of people can't install Flash Player (double click on the installer and nothing happens). Read the complaints lost of times on the net.
Conflicts in many cases with Quicktime components and Ad Blockers as well.

John