I need a new podcast host

[Legit-Design]

Force people to use torrents.
Give more alternatives to download with torrents .
Have a really cheap seedbox for your torrents.
Advertise your torrent downloads with  good step by step wiki (download clients or browser addon) for standalone µtorrent, firefox/chrome browser addon  http://torque.bittorrent.com/oneclick/

Use sites like http://www.bitlet.org/ OR http://www.furk.net/ OR http://zbigz.com/ for people who don't want browser addons or software to download.

Donating bandwidth and storage space for your blog instead of the other donation methods would be nice. You could have your own CDN wherever people are interested in your videos.
I think people stay away from torrents because usually these kinds of files don't have many seeds and download rate really sucks compared to ftp/http from a good server.
Show people how good speeds can be with torrent downloads.
Torrents and other P2P are already responsible for majority of internet traffic today, why not join them at full force?

Make people download their videos from youtube (is it ok by youtube for you to do this?) there are already many youtube download sites and addons and programs and so on.

[baljemmett]

What do other videobloggers with similar number of views do?

They do very same thing Dave does and upload their videos to YT/Twitch/whatever. I dont know what being a videoblogger has to do with hosting server when you DO NOT HOST ANY VIDEO FILES

Except Dave does host video files, hence the discussion about bandwidth and transfer caps...

Does he? Where?

The downloadable podcast files - there's a .m4v link underneath each video on the blog itself, which are also the files that the RSS feed points at.  Hence why Dave's host blocking BitLove stopped the BitTorrent RSS from working, etc.

[ashplant]

I maintain a very simple website for a friend of mine. We use Hostmonster.

Hostmonster is OK for the sort of thing we do, but for more ambitious things, I'd look for a less mass-market site.

I'm also leery of peer to peer, but that may be just cause I'm an old fart and my trusting days are over. 

[Markybhoy]

Jupiterbroadcasting who produce a lot of video content on youtube use http://www.scaleengine.com/
might be worth a look.

[EEVblog]

They do very same thing Dave does and upload their videos to YT/Twitch/whatever. I dont know what being a videoblogger has to do with hosting server when you DO NOT HOST ANY VIDEO FILES

Because for some reason a few thousand people seem to want to watch a compressed 640x360 of the video on their iPhone or whatever via their RSS reader.
Quite frankly I wish I didn't have to offer a podcast version it would save me a lot of trouble and now a fair bit additional cost.

[EEVblog]

Force people to use torrents.

I may as well save the trouble and force them to download/watch from Youtube.

[duskglow]

OK, here's a stupid question:  Why not just add some unrelated video and host them on youtube?

EDIT:  Just saw your last comment - AFTER I posted.  I still ask it, though.  Why not?  It's a worldwide CDN, it can handle all your traffic and more besides, you can make money from ads, and it's free.

[EEVblog]

Does he? Where?

There are 4 ways people can watch my videos:
- From within Youtube. The most popular.
- From the embedded Youtube player on eevblog.com 2nd most popular option
- From iTunes or some other RSS reader/player/viewer thingo. (3rd most popular). This option I have to host the video file myself, and to stop complaints I have to host all previous episodes as well. Maybe 3500 people take this option, but it's hard to get good stats because it can do multiple counts when your download fails because the connection is shit to my overtaxed server.
Not many video blogger do this because it's a PITA, and it can costs you a fortune to host the files when you become popular. I'm doubly screwed because my videos are very long.
- From the torrent feed, which currently still sucks off the same RSS feed.

[EEVblog]

And door number 3 is this:

1) Stop hosting any video files myself and adding any video link to my blog posts. Saving time, cost, and hassle. The RSS feed now contains just my text blog post and the embedded link code (which probably doesn't work for people)
2) Force everyone to use Youtube's RSS feed. My channel is here: my http://gdata.youtube.com/feeds/api/users/EEVblog/uploads
I have not tried this myself, so will have to do that, but I don't use iTunes so have no idea if it works with that.

The downside of doing this is that:
a) everyone has to change their reader to point to youtube if they want to still get the videos that way.
b) continue to subscribe to the eevblog RSS Feed if they want my text blog posts and updates etc.
c) I don't know what happens to iTunes

I'm liking door number 3, but I will need people to test how well the Youtube RSS video feed works

[ve7xen]

I haven't seen it used hardly at all lately, but Coral still seems to be running. Worth a try, perhaps backed by a cheap unmetered dedicated server?

http://www.coralcdn.org/

Edit: Ah nevermind it looks like they've had to cap filesize at 50MB. As far as door number 3, you could easily proxy or redirect the existing feed URL to the Youtube feed. Users would probably get a pile of 'new' posts they'd already read, but other than that shouldn't have to change anything.

[jancumps]

...
2) Force everyone to use Youtube's RSS feed. My channel is here: my http://gdata.youtube.com/feeds/api/users/EEVblog/uploads
I have not tried this myself, so will have to do that, but I don't use iTunes so have no idea if it works
...
I'm liking door number 3, but I will need people to test how well the Youtube RSS video feed works

Tried it with the link you supplied on an iPad with latest version of IOS and podcast viewer:

Fail, error:
Unable to subscribe
The link provided is not a valid podcast.

[jancumps]

and when you add that url to iTunes (11.0.2.26) on a windows 8 pc, it shows a podcast with 0 casts.

[EEVblog]

and when you add that url to iTunes (11.0.2.26) on a windows 8 pc, it shows a podcast with 0 casts.

Hmm, thanks.
Work great with Miro for me.

Can you try this one:
https://gdata.youtube.com/feeds/base/users/eevblog/uploads

[EEVblog]

Here are some methods for iTunes:
http://lifehacker.com/how-to-turn-youtube-channels-into-subscribable-podcasts-496976976

Although I will have to change the official feed on my iTunes page to try and read the Youtube feed.

[jancumps]

Can you try this one:
https://gdata.youtube.com/feeds/base/users/eevblog/uploads

Fails with different error on iPod:
Unable to subscribe
The supplied link is not a valid podcast

Also tried with http in stead of https. No difference.

[N TYPE]

When I read the title, I thought you were getting rid of Chris lol

[mikeselectricstuff]

My limited numbers on the podcast at the moment are very likely because the performance sucks.

..or maybe people prefer Youtube...

There are 4 ways people can watch my videos:

However many different ways you choose to make content available, someone will use it. I'm sure if you offered to post out DVDs once a month a few people would use it.
The  question is how many users of a particular distribution method would give up watching  and not use another method , and is it worth the effort to support  those people?

I know there will be a few people with quasi-religious objections to certain channels, but at some point you need to make a cost/effort vs. benefit choice.   

I can see that it is important to offer some way to download for offline viewing, but it seems that there are ways to do this off Youtube, and presumably itunes isn't costing you anything for hosting. How many people would you lose if these were the only outlets?

Think about the possible tradeoff between user loss due to more limited distribution vs. gain due to you having more time to make more content.

I have no idea what the  answer is, and our field is probably too specialist for mainstream stats to be meaningful (also most potential subscribers will be more tech-savvy than potential viewers of fluffykittens.com) , but one thing I do know is I've never had a single request from anyone to make my stuff available outside YouTube.

[ddavidebor]

I prefer you have 30 minute more for produce content and 30$ more for your famili or the opposite, instead of spend it on not-so-useful distribution metod

[nitro2k01]

The torrent option is basically free, and could even be managed by volunteers if all else fails. The question is not if the torrent should be kept but whether that should be the only option to get an offline download. The real question is if the http/CDN option is needed for mobile devices any more. The difference is just convenience, IMO. Torrenting is cheap but a "pro user" option. I think it should especially kept for getting a high res copy of certain videos (teardowns and such) which look especially pornographic in 720p or 1080p. (But for myself, I can just dump them from YT and play them in VLC, which I find plays HD content better than the web browser on my crappy computer.)

In theory, everyone has a mobile device which can play YT videos and has cellular internet connectivity. In practice, not everyone does, and the internet connectivity might be crap or you might be limited by your data plan. But as time progresses I think the need for an option between YT and torrents will approach zero. Another option might be to educate users on how to download videos from YT for offline use. YT already offers encodings in various qualities, it's just a matter of using the right tool to download them.

[EEVblog]

..or maybe people prefer Youtube...

Yes.
But it is also undeniable that a huge percentage of people now use their mobile device to watch video.
So it's a matter of which mechanism they use to do that.

However many different ways you choose to make content available, someone will use it. I'm sure if you offered to post out DVDs once a month a few people would use it.
The  question is how many users of a particular distribution method would give up watching  and not use another method , and is it worth the effort to support  those people?
I know there will be a few people with quasi-religious objections to certain channels, but at some point you need to make a cost/effort vs. benefit choice.   

Well, yes, I've always been of that opinion when it comes to the podcast version. It's always been that PITA thing I have to maintain.
I've kept it going because at least a few thousand do seem to use. That's a large number, but realistically is only 10% or less of my audience.
And there are ways many of them can keep doing that without me having to host the files.

I can see that it is important to offer some way to download for offline viewing, but it seems that there are ways to do this off Youtube, and presumably itunes isn't costing you anything for hosting. How many people would you lose if these were the only outlets?

iTunes do not host anything. I do not and cannot upload anything to iTunes (at least last time I checked). It works by sucking your RSS feed and the pointer you give it to where the video file is located.

Think about the possible tradeoff between user loss due to more limited distribution vs. gain due to you having more time to make more content.

Yes, that's what I'm doing, I am very seriously considering dropping hosting the file myself.

but one thing I do know is I've never had a single request from anyone to make my stuff available outside YouTube.

I get requests all the time for how to download the files directly. They have no idea what RSS is or that I have a website with all the files, albeit at 640x480 or less.

[EEVblog]

The torrent option is basically free, and could even be managed by volunteers if all else fails. The question is not if the torrent should be kept but whether that should be the only option to get an offline download.

It's not. There are dozen diffeent ways to rip the video from Youtube, or properly download it via the RSS feed I gave above.

In theory, everyone has a mobile device which can play YT videos and has cellular internet connectivity. In practice, not everyone does, and the internet connectivity might be crap or you might be limited by your data plan.

This is precisely why people use iTunes and/or RSS readers/players. They grab your content when online at home and then auto dump the file to your mobile device so you can playback seamlessly anywhere. Only a fool would chew up a few hundred MB of expensive mobile internet bandwidth to watch a single hour long youtube video while on the move.

Another option might be to educate users on how to download videos from YT for offline use.

Yep, I think I have to finally say, sorry, that's it. My videos are only available on Youtube. Here are some links to a dozen ways to download/feed/rip/iTunes it

[poundy]

the feed doesn't seem to have any kind of content that a generic podcast reader can access.  Even in a browser there's no attachment. 

Where's the link to those ways to get the files from YT? 

[EEVblog]

the feed doesn't seem to have any kind of content that a generic podcast reader can access.  Even in a browser there's no attachment. 

It works 100% for me using Miro.
It downloads a 1280x720 version of the video no problems.
 

[ddavidebor]

I watch you 100% from ipad, 50% offline, 100% from youtube

Just i use one of the 8227282829292929 apps for that

[Rasz]

Does he? Where?

The downloadable podcast files - there's a .m4v link underneath each video on the blog itself, which are also the files that the RSS feed points at.  Hence why Dave's host blocking BitLove stopped the BitTorrent RSS from working, etc.

Holy crap you are right. Well this is weird/awkward.
I know of only one Video podcast that does this (Hak5) and they use their parent company (revision3, internet video producer behemoth) for hosting. Hosting on your own is just crazy and expensive.