I was disappointed to get word that the Silverlight Streaming Service is going away, as explained in this announcement. SLS provided an easy, scalable way of delivering Silverlight applications and media. The idea was that Microsoft would handle the delivery of your Silverlight apps using its server infrastructure so that the end-user would have the best experience.

I suppose this is why its very important to read any fine print. This is taken from the SLS front page:

The service offers web designers and developers a free (*) and convenient solution for hosting and streaming cross-platform, cross-browser media experiences and rich interactive applications that run on Windows™ and Mac. (*) While the service is in beta, storage is free up to 10 GB and streaming is free up to 5 TB of aggregated bandwidth per user account per month. Videos should not exceed 10 minutes and have a maximum bit rate of 1.4 Mbps. As we move out of beta, unlimited streaming will also be available for free with advertising, or with payment of a nominal fee for use of the service without advertising.

I am currently using SLS to host a bunch of screen casts and demos, and need to figure out where to move this video content to. So far I've come up with these options:

- move them to my current web hosting provider and incur the bandwidth and storage costs. I think this is what I'll do because I should still be well in the limits of my current plan after this move.

- move them to a different free hosting service. I suppose YouTube is an option, and Dan Wahlin was nice enough to refer blip.tv to me as an option. This may require that I re-encode and segment some of the videos, however.

- move them to a pay hosting service - like screencast.com.

- move them into Windows Azure and incur any costs for bandwidth.

Does anyone else have other ideas? Are you currently using SLS and figuring out what to do? Let me know your ideas.