When a small business begins looking into streaming video hosting for live events as a service there are several factors to take into account in choosing the right provider, at the best price.
There are free services available online such as Livestream and Ustream, which offers good free live streaming and archived content but does not guarantee exclusive bandwidth across their networks.
If you need to have a good online experience without lag or breakup the only answer is to turn to a dedicated service provider, but this will come at a cost.
Firstly choose a supplier of streaming video hosting that has a robust CDN, content delivery network.
Look for providers of streaming video hosting that offer global availability across high speed fibre optic backbones with the capacity to handle peak loads and flash traffic.
Decide what platform you want your stream to be viewed on, the most common being either Adobe Flash or Microsoft Windows Media Player.
Your chosen supplier should be able to advise of what is the optimum player for their high speed networks.
Another major consideration is traffic.
How many people will be viewing your content? This is measured in bandwidth, the average small business would start on a 5TB package with scalability and the ability to archive video.
This allows on demand content to be viewed anytime, rather than as a live stream.
Without a vast amount of training and knowledge you will be able to stream live content from your small business globally with a few clicks of a mouse, making streaming video hosting, a successful tool for any small business that wants to empower the development of the internet and reach global markets with live event streaming.