Setting up your own channel, and best services?

[Wayne Morellini]

I have often thought about setting up video services in the past, and using Red rays network, but Redray has gone set top box only, and closed distribution, and most viewers wont be able to afford that. I need advice from people who know the ends and out about which hosting service, or DIY, is the best for price, ad setup and revenue, viewers and viewing quality? I can sacrifice some cost for better ad return. I've seen a huge list of services on Wikipedia a while back, but that does not tell you much.

Here is a couple of things I'm looking at:

Personal/pro video blog.

A channel of productions and series people come and click on to see (including push mail notification of selected content).
A community channel (Red is missing a big opportunity here).

Embedding in my own website pages or blog, or in others.

Maybe hosting the website on the video service if they are set up for this and a good deal.

Retention of all copyright. I believe in, sharing, profit, not giving everything away. Also so, if find a service that hosts websites as well, I can move all my content and pages to a new site.


These are more things I'm looking at possibly expanding into.

 

[Wayne Morellini]

I'm also been wondering how using Vimeo stacks up to YouTube?

 

[Terry VerHaar]

I think many (most?) video sites let you embed your player in your own site rather than hosting your site itself. That involves 2 providers but covers the bases pretty well.

If you are seeking to charge for your video, Vimeo has just launched a new VOD service for it Pro Users ($199/year) which handles the transaction for you - you set your own price - and splits 90/10 in your favor.

Another full service provider worth looking at is Brightcove - a MA company started a few years ago by Jeremy Allaire. More expensive but a very high quality service.

These are just a couple of options to look at. Many out there.

 

[Wayne Morellini]

Terry, thanks very much. I'm pretty behind the web tech 8 ball here, so am trying to find my way through the maze.

 

[Marc Wielage]

I think trying to do it from scratch is fraught with problems because of money and bandwidth. Vimeo Pro would be my advice as well:

http://vimeo.com/pro

 

[Les Dittert]

Does Vimeo pro pay per view offer UHD ?
I couldn't make heads or tails from their web page.

 

[Wayne Morellini]

See, that is why it is good to ask people who have researched this before. I would spend up to 100 hours researching something before I start, when I'm not going to do much with it for a while, but just to start in the right expansion path.

Nobody has pointed to websites of people that have researched it either, that have the information. Will probably have to track this down then, might take 20 hours just to find a site that has researched it and covered most of it.

Amusingly, I found an ad for $1 domains. I just put something in their to see the list, to my amazement it accepted "me" and gave lots of options to order. Suspecting from the main page everything looked too good cheap unlimited etc to be true, even in India, and it might be a scam to get your credit card, I put something I knew should be taken "Apple", and it returned them as orderable. I looked closer and noticed they could be "back order"ed. I wonder if one could use this as legal standing to force Apple to eventually give up it's domain in court. . Like all those people putting money into those African email. 'I am president.... . accountant....x millions' sort of email scams, and then demand they have legal right to their share of the actual money (according to their logic one could send a fake email for every bodies bank accounts balance to oneself, answer it, and then demand a part of every accounts money). . Ridiculous, a little more than back ordering a specific thing only owned by somebody else and not for sale).