Does anyone have any advice for someone setting up a streaming media delivery server for video content? I was looking at the real helix server, but it looks like the free version can only output 1.0 mbps, which may be alright to start with but we want to be able to ramp up delivery if demand increases without shelling out 2 grand for real universal server. Windows media is (presumably) free with windows, and we have a win2k advanced server license sitting in the shelf from a fileserver we moved to gentoo. Also, I think we can easily incorporate DRM licensing into the streams if we use windows media, which would be a plus, though not really necessary. (Divx and avi files are right out, don't even bother suggesting, and plain mpeg-1 and mpeg-2 need too high a bitrate for decent quality video to bother with streaming.)
Actually, now that I look at it, it seems all the servers can serve content not encoded in their native format. So I have to make a choice of both how to encode the video and what server to use. Encoders = Windows Media, Real, or Quicktime, and servers = real helix, windows media, or darwin.
Anyone done this before? Any suggestions? How hard is content licensing to set up with windows media services? If we go the windows route, we'll use windows 2000; if not, it'll be debian or gentoo linux. Bandwidth is a non-issue, we have tons.
