Dreamhost...Comments...

I am thinking of using Dreamhost to host an image hosting site (maybe video too). They are offering unlimited disk space and unlimited traffic. Is this a good choice? What if I go with VPS from them? Thanks.

Their really isn't "unlimited disk space" .. it's shared hosting. You will be cool for quite awhile until your site really blows up which by then you should be able to afford a dedicated host. Regardless DreamHost is a good hosting company - I used them for a long time. I also recommend HostGator

dreamhost doesnt allow fopen thinking it is a security risk. So you'll have problems with blackhat scripts and scrapers and such that rely heavily on this. However, they do allow cURL to be used that can mimic the stuff that fopen does. So you can rewrite your favorite BH scripts to use CuRL and be used on dreamhost.

hostgator is bad, as soon as you put a load on there server they will flag you because honestly they are greedy..they will replace you for 20 other clients that dont use as much server as you

Dreamhost is very good for "starting" an imagehosting website. If you are getting more and more traffic, and are use more and more Cpu/hd/ram they will ask you to move to there VPS solutions which is VERY expensive.
The policy of Dreamhost states that u cant use there hosting if you are setting up your website for storage solutions (image,files etc). But if you dont have alot traffic they wont bother you.

So my tip, start using dreamhost for setting up your imagehosting website. Then when u start getting more and more traffic (5000++ unique a day) switch to a dedicated server or VPS from another hosting provider. At the moment im using w w w. hostineuro .com and im statisfiedwith there great price/quality ratio.

Another tip, dont use MYSQL on dreamhost because its slow.

Dreamhost is a great host actually. But whatever your host, if your site gets too big, they will start creating problems for you!

Well I don't want to repeat what others said, of course you cant route 20 TB a month through them just because it says unlimited bandwidth.
However, I am currently quite happy with them, seeing that they have a cool promotion right now (and yes they can get away with such prices).
Now here is a little trick:

They generate a random % everytime you visit their site and set a cookie for that on your PC. Whenever you clear your cookies and refresh the main site you will get another coupon code - the best you can get is 95% off. Here it is: 201

I prefer HostGator, but yeh once your site gets to 2k/day or maybe a bit more they will kick you off.

Dreamhost= no cpanel
Dreamhost= Shut you down if you use too much resources
Dreamhost= Good for getting started if you do most stuff by ftp, If not get started with hostgator, It is unlimmited also and cheaper.

any unlimmited plan will need to be moved to vps, or dedicated if it uses too much resources.

ps, I have both dreamhost and hostgator, and seo-host [damn am spending almost as much as dedicated]

Dreamhost= no c-panel, so I have to look at another host since I want to use wpmanager dx.

Dreamhost is a mixed bag. You don't need c-panel, plus you get shell access (bonus).

To elaborate, it's still shared hosting.. so you are still sharing the server's resources with our sites.. unless you upgrade and go for their VPS package. I think it's a great to begin with and you can play around and get your feet wet.