Is BlueHost Good Web Host for Hosting Multimedia Websites (Video/Audio Streaming)?

[damash.amol]

Hi,

I'm going to start my website containing several hundreds of audio and video files, specially in format of mp3. So I should know the answer of this question before spending my time on creating this site.

I want to know if bluehost allows to storage several hundreds of multimedia files? Some of them may have the size of several tens of MB. And are all formats of multimedia files playable with bluehost? Is there anyone with personal experience?

Thank you

[Early Out]

A couple of important points:

First, BH prohibits the storage of any copyrighted material (unless, of course, you are the one who holds the copyright). They routinely scan accounts, looking for large collections of audio/video files, and if they suspect that the material is copyrighted, they will suspend (or terminate) your account. So, if you're planning to make a lot of audio/video files available from your website, and they're not copyrighted, you should let BH know, in advance, what you're doing. This will avoid problems later.

Second, you can store unlimited MBs of stuff on your account, as long as those files are directly related to your website. In other words, you need to have a website that actually links to those files. You can't just store a bunch of files and let people download them by entering the URLs for them in their browsers.

Third, while you are given unlimited hosting space and bandwidth, you can't do anything that has an adverse impact on the other customers you're sharing a server with. So, if your site becomes very, very popular, and the activity on it is bringing the server to its knees, BH will shut down your account, and ask you to find other hosting. If you're getting that much traffic, bargain shared hosting isn't the place for your site.

Regarding the "playability" of multimedia formats, that has almost nothing to do with the hosting. A server just coughs up files when asked. It's the visitor's browser that has to figure out how to display a file. For example, if I don't have Flash installed on my PC, there's nothing the server can do about that - I won't be able to view Flash files.