Secure and cheap method for streaming Flash video

Question

I'm working on a site which allows people to pay to stream videos online. I'm currently using JW Player to stream FLV/F4V files from Amazon S3, using a signature.

This method is extremely unstable, and needless to say, useless. I've heard I can use Amazon CloudFront as a CDN for my videos. But that it won't make the files any more secure, if I've understood it correctly.

Price is an important thing. I know hosting/streaming video is expensive, but what are my best options, for a cheap, reliable, and as-safe-you-can solution for me? I have very little hosting experience, so if I were to host a streaming server myself, I had to pay somebody to set it up.

Answer 1

Red5 is a free and open source flash media server compatible:

http://osflash.org/red5

Answer 2

Here's a list of Video Streaming Services

http://www.adobe.com/products/flashmediaserver/fvss/

For instance Amazon CloudFront integrates with Amazon S3, there's no monthly fee, it's based on the amount of content delivered so you can account for it in the price a user pays to view a video ( sorry, it almost sounds like I'm promoting them , which is really not my intention, just giving an example :) )

As for security, I think the OSMF framework comes with a bunch of security features. More info here:

http://blogs.adobe.com/osmf/tag/osmf