Researching streaming media providers...

[benburch]

Folks,

I am investigating buying enough streaming bandwidth to make White Rose into a viable live source for Liberal/Progressive talk radio streaming. (I must be insane.)

Does anybody have any recommendations on who to go with and who to avoid? Any particularly good deals?

Perhaps soembody here runs an ISP and does this service? I'd rather give the business to another Liberal if possible.

Thanks!

[Renew Deal]

1. Windows Server 2003

It offers Windows Media 9. The good is that you can have unlimited streaming clients on a connection where you don't used authentication. The bad is that it doesn't support quicktime. I bet you can get it as part of the small business server. It works well and is easy to use.

You can also use Darwin Streaming from Apple for quicktime, but it is open source and it's going to take some real technical knowledge to get it working. Real's Helix servers is overpriced.

[tridim]

2. Check out Akamai and Akamai-type streaming providers

They do a great job, I've used them in the past. I hear Akamai is expensive and there are newer providers that are cheaper.

Or, find a co-location provider with good distributed bandwidth and deploy your own servers. This option is more expensive, but at least you'll have control of your server. I'm currently using a co-host solution (with leased servers). It's nice to be able to log in remotely for admin purposes.

[zulchzulu]

3. If you're a DIY person, check out this ISP

www.readyhosting.com

500MB of server space. Real Media streaming. If you translate your audio to RealAudio at a decent level (16bps stereo), you could stream a fair amount of audio. You may want to get more server space, but the ISP offers ASP, Cold Fusion and other backend capabilities for $99/year.