PS. I forgot to mention, the video played instantly while still on my computer but took forever once it went online. That's why I thought it wasn't working.

have you taken a look at it with yslow? You should be able to see what's happening with the connection time and then the follow up download time.

That seems like a long time though.

I haven't checked out yslow yet. However I called my host and they said I would have to upgrade to a cloud account in order to stream video or get a dedicated server.

Streaming costs a lot of money and isn't worth the trouble unless you're looking to use a LOT of video.

You can also fake streaming with some clever apache configurations and JW Player or Flow Player.

I agree with going for a Cloud Front hosting for all static files anyway, much better performance and overall cheaper bandwidth, but steer clear of streaming services unless it's an absolute must.

"Streaming" video allows you to FF and RW, the way you are doing it is just a file download. Nothing wrong with that, your host is either slow or specifically throttling video files.

Try uploading a 15mb file, something like a zip. Even rename the video file with zip extension. See how long it takes, try downloading the video file directly and compare.