There are different types of technologies to delivery streaming video, and in general you can break them up into three categories:
Stand alone:
By standalone we mean any video solution that is able to be served from your website to a visitor's web browser, without any specific software support enabled on webserver side. The simplest example, you can place a mpeg file on your site just like any other file, and with the right MIME type defined on your site for that file, some browsers will download the entire file, and then be able to launch an applicable application on your system to play the file (like Windows Movie Player). The drawback with this solution, is the entire file has to download before it can be played.
Flash video has several solutions for video, see Does 3Essentials support Flash video on my hosting plan? for details, two of which (embedded video and progressive download) require nothing on the server side, and therefore also fall into this category. The progressive download solution gives you the ability to start playback before the entire video file downloads, thus giving a near-streaming experience, and can allow the user not only to start the video viewing before the file has completely downloaded, but also to stop it... therefor reducing the amount of video file that may be downloaded for the user to view the portion they wished to view.
Server-based streaming engine:
these are "true streaming" solutions, and are solutions require a specific software on the server side that is specifically designed to facilitate the near-instant starting of video playback, real time stop-start-forward-rewind type playback controls. With these, you're generally only downloading/streaming what the user is viewing, plus a bit for buffering. These solutions can be based on several different server based streaming products:
Windows Media Services: supports WMA, WMV, ASF, MP3, and WSX.
Realnetworks Helix Streaming Server: supports a variety of formats, including RealMedia, Windows Media, Quicktime and MPEG-4.
Macromedia Communication Server: specializing in Flash-based streaming video and interactive multimedia.
Apple Quicktime Streaming Server: supporting a few formats including MPEG-4 and 3GPP.
Content network:
Here we're talking about a 3rd party provider who has a hosting solution specifically configured to deliver streaming video. These companies will have an infrastructure utilizing the server-based streaming engine solutions noted above, so technically it's no different than the item above. We've noted it here simply to call your attention to the fact that it is one viable and frequently used solution, to host your site at one location, and then link to your videos delivered through a video content network provider like these.
Which of these are supported on your 3Essentials hosting service will vary based on the hosting service you have:
Shared Hosting
Stand-alone: Limited use of standalone video is allowed. Small files, few in number.
An example of acceptable limited use: a church website that has a short video with a small excerpt form the previous week's sermon.
An example of unacceptable use: all 6 star wars episodes
please note, other limitations within our Terms of Service, like prohibiting of adult content, still apply.
Server-based Streaming: No server-based streaming solutions are supported on Shared hosting.
Content network: Hosting your site at 3Essentials and hosting streaming video at a separate video streaming content network provider is perfectly acceptable, as the video is not being served from 3Essentials.
Managed Virtual Servers:
Stand-alone: Limited use of standalone video is allowed. Small files, few in number.
An example of acceptable limited use: a church website that has a short video with a small excerpt form the previous week's sermon.
An example of unacceptable use: all 6 star wars episodes
please note, other limitations within our Terms of Service, like prohibiting of adult content, still apply.
Server-based Streaming: No server-based streaming solutions are built into our Managed Dedicated Server solutions.
Content network: Hosting your site at 3Essentials and hosting streaming video at a separate video streaming content network provider is perfectly acceptable, as the video is not being served from 3Essentials.
Managed Dedicated Servers:
Stand-alone: unlimited use of standalone video is allowed.
please note, other limitations within our Terms of Service, like prohibiting of adult content, still apply.
check your bandwidth/transfer limits with your plan to ensure they meet your usage.
Flash based websites (subtly different that flash streaming video) are supported.
Server-based Streaming: No server-based streaming solutions are built into our Managed Dedicated Server solutions.
Content network: Hosting your site at 3Essentials and hosting streaming video at a separate video streaming content network provider is perfectly acceptable, as the video is not being served from 3Essentials.
Unmanaged Virtual Servers:
Stand-alone: Limited use of standalone video is allowed. Small files, few in number.
An example of acceptable limited use: a church website that has a short video with a small excerpt form the previous week's sermon.
An example of unacceptable use: all 6 star wars episodes
please note, other limitations within our Terms of Service, like prohibiting of adult content, still apply.
Server-based Streaming: For Unmanaged servers, you are the administrator and build your own hosting solution. As such, you may enable whatever server-based streaming solution that you license, install and manage yourself on your server, and that the hardware can support.
Content network: Hosting your site at 3Essentials and hosting streaming video at a separate video streaming content network provider is perfectly acceptable, as the video is not being served from 3Essentials.
Unmanaged Dedicated Servers:
Stand-alone: Unlimited use of standalone video is allowed.
please note, other limitations within our Terms of Service, like prohibiting of adult content, still apply.
check your bandwidth/transfer limits with your plan to ensure they meet your usage.
Server-based Streaming: For Unmanaged servers, you are the administrator and build your own hosting solution. As such, you may enable whatever server-based streaming solution that you license, install and manage yourself on your server, and that the hardware can support.
Content network: Hosting your site at 3Essentials and hosting streaming video at a separate video streaming content network provider is perfectly acceptable, as the video is not being served from 3Essentials.
For all types that are supported, if the resource consumption by the video solution is excessive and impacts the availability of our infrastructure to the detriment of other customers, 3Essentials may contact you regarding resource consumption, and require moving those functions to a Dedicated Server solution, or may require the cessation of that activity, depending on the nature and impact of the activity. 3Essentials resolves the right solely to determine what constitutes excessive resource consumption.
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