When planing a site of this scale, there are plenty of factors that needs to be taken into account.
Basically starting from the technology that has to be used to questions such as the server farms and the database design it requires.
One of the most important factors to look at here is Server capacity and Bandwidth, because this is going to help you evaluate the cost involved in setting up such a project.
The data transfer involved is surely going to cost you, so this is a very important aspect when calculating ROI.
Regarding Technology selection, you have either Microsoft or Apple Streaming Technology to choose from.
You can definitely start with a shared server to start with, a safe approach so as to say....
Some other dependant questions would be, what are the features that you are going to provide?
Are you going to provide features similar to that of Youtube? or is just that one can view videos alone?
How are you going to handle Copyright Violations?
How are you going to handle Moderations etc etc?
Either way, you definitely want to save both space and bandwidth.
A dedicated server is the way to go, internal if possible, but a pre-set up package with full support may be better to start off with.
Regards
