What kind of video formats are required nowadays for streaming?
 

Let's take tube sites. What kind of video formats do i need to offer so surfers can watch them on all devices (pc / apple/ mobiles) ?

Maybe there is one universal format that plays everywhere?
What's the best setup?

all you need is .mp4

and then get a flash player with html5 fallback and it will work on nearly any device

http://www.longtailvideo.com/jw-player/

mp4 but with x264 encoding

Add webm to the mix, so users without flash can play html5 video too.

Streaming videos seems easy to some. However i have noticed it is actually quite difficult for the average webmaster.
A few years ago we almost made a sister site to www.memberchannels.com to let webmasters put their content there, and then use it anywhere they wish. We would just handle the streaming and charge pretty much the same as you would pay to your host for BW anyway.

Hell we have had so many ideas we let slide by...time to write a press release or something..lol

Anyway You have enough info in this thread to get it done :)

Ok, so iphone/ipad users watch videos through HTML5 ? (since they don't have flash)

And regular PC surfers can watch .mp4/x264 through Flash ?

Correct, if your movies are h264/x264 mp4 and you use that player it will work fine on iOS devices (if no Flash is detected it will use html5).
This video format and player alone are enough to make it work for about 93% of all users (incl mobile devices). The other 7% is certain phones, but if they don't have a modern smart phone they most likely won't want to stream videos anyways)

I still wonder how sites without the Premium Paid Version of JW Player, manage to remove th watermark of JW Player, any ideas?... I have seen plenty of sites using the free version and they are not displaying the watermark in their videos.

Maybe an older version?

I pay for the premium version so I don't know. But in the past I think it was easy to remove the logo, but it might be harder now, not sure.

Bumping this because of the incredibly helpful info in here. Thanks for the breakdown of useful formats.

mp4 (x264 encoded) + http://mediaelementjs.com/

you can encode it with this two free applications
http://www.filehorse.com/download-fr...deo-converter/
http://www.filehorse.com/download-any-video-converter/