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I know a lot of website owners who can't use Youtube/Vimdeo/Ustream/etc because the video playlist is private, but don't have the budget for the hosted video solutions.

And not big enough for netflix/amazon/apple/etc :)

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Thanks (to you and jon_dahl). I find it interesting that the cost difference is enough to entice so many folks into doing video themselves.

I think of video as taking up a lot of resources, so therefore having a lot of costs--not to mention writing and maintaining the code.

Edit: I think of video like email--a surprisingly complex pain in the butt that is best outsourced. Apparently not, though, for a lot of companies.

Actually, email isn't a bad analogy. Video is complicated, and most people shouldn't build their own proprietary technology. But the outsourcing often happens at the API level: if you use a third-party CDN, transcoder, player, and analytics platform, you can outsource much of the complexity.

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