Can anyone recommend any good books that would teach me the basics of creating my own website that contains streaming video and downloadable video? Thanks.

you can learn a whole lot just by using google... maybe start by looking at streamingmedia.com, webmonkey.com, etc.

Also take a look around in the forum you posted this in, there lots
of threads on web delivery and streaming video. You can also use
the search function and restrict it to just this forum. If you use
keywords like streaming you should get plenty of threads to read.

Do you want to host the site yourself? Or are you looking to have some company do it for you? If the later is the case you can simply look for whether or not they support streaming. Mine, for instance, supports Quicktime Streaming for free, the rest is simply setting the video with right parameters.

Do you need help with the HTML aspects as well? Or simply how to stream video, instead of download, on the net?

<<<-- Originally posted by Mark Sloan : Do you want to host the site yourself? Or are you looking to have some company do it for you? If the later is the case you can simply look for whether or not they support streaming. Mine, for instance, supports Quicktime Streaming for free, the rest is simply setting the video with right parameters.

Do you need help with the HTML aspects as well? Or simply how to stream video, instead of download, on the net? -->>>

Well, as of now I'm only interested in letting others download video...so I'm thinking of going with something simple as X-drive. I should be fine with the HTML.