In this article I want to clear up the differences between what a CDN does, what bandwidth is and why you need it for your Internet TV site, and the difference in what web hosting is.
When you have a Internet TV station it is not just a website. Many people are under the impression that any shared hosting account will be able to handle their Internet TV site. If you look at most hosting companies for example, Go Daddy, host gator, and many others they offer what they call shared hosting. This is a hosting package in which one server is shared by hundreds of paying customers. They offer what they call “unlimited bandwidth” Which is not so unlimited when it comes to video. Compare it to your phone company who gives you unlimited long distance, but if you were to run a telemarketing company out of your home they would call that an abuse of service and shut your unlimited long distance down. When it comes to video there is no unlimited bandwidth for hosting. Bandwidth costs money.
There are three key ingredients for the backend of an Internet TV station. First your shared web hosting only holds your website files. For example your graphics your HTML code or contact us form those are the only things that your web hosting account holds. Your video files are going to be very large. It is common for many Internet TV stations to have hundreds or thousands of gigabytes of video and these videos are not stored on your shared web hosting account. Instead you must have a CDN.
A CDN does two things first it stores your video content and second it delivers the video to your viewers seamlessly without buffering or shutting down. A CDN has the proper server set up and configuration for video play out and delivery.
Your bandwidth is what people are using to see your videos. For example if you have 100 viewers viewing your Internet TV station at the same time and your video is let’s say 500 MB long each of those viewers is watching that video at a certain bit rat. For example let’s say 256 kB a second; Then there is a certain amount of bandwidth that has to be used in order for that video to display properly to all 100 customers at the same time. People naturally think that the bandwidth is coming from the viewers Internet service provider. Well that’s true but the video also must be delivered to the Internet service provider. In other words there is a server doing the upload providing the video upload and then the viewer who is downloading the stream. So if you do not have a proper CDN and server configuration then the upload of the video content to those 100 simultaneous viewers will not take place, or if it does take place it will cause most of the viewers player to buffer continuously until they just close your site.
So not only do you have to have a proper Internet TV site with proper Internet TV features to build playlists, you also need a CDN. Now if you are a little bit intimidated don’t be. We have complete turnkey packages that provide you everything you need. We are not only a CDN but we also provide you your own Internet TV site with your own custom design. This means that you can market your own name, your own domain name and self brand yourself. Your viewers will have no idea that in the background we are there providing the service.
Check out our Internet TV packages by clicking on our Internet TV link in our navigation menu.
For more info see Start a Internet TV Station
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