EDIT: I'm looking for a reliable ffmpeg-friendly web host. Any ideas/stories? [View all]

Over a year ago, Dreamhost urged me to upgrade my PHP to version 5.3, which I did in the Dreamhost control panel. Today, I uploaded a script to my domain that includes some functions available only in php >= 5.3 and got fatal errors. I checked the control panel and it says I am running 5.3, but when I ran php -v in the shell I learned that it is actually version 5.2.17.

I then selected the 5.4 option in the control panel and was informed that the change would take 5-10 minutes. That was yesterday morning. Still running 5.2.17

Dreamhost offers ffmpeg on their servers, which I now need, but their version was built in 2011 and they provide no support whatsoever for it. I am decent with the UNIX shell and managed to get my own up-to-date ffmpeg working on my account, but I see that there are many other ISPs advertising full ffmpeg support.

Here's what I want (in order of importance):

1. PHP >= 5.3 (preferably higher) with no gotchas such as exec() or finfo() disabled or some other deal-breaker shite like that.

EDIT: Lots of storage (preferably unlimited). One site I run has a lot of (40-70 minute) audio files.

2. support/updates for ffmpeg and libraries

3. $$$ < Dreamhost ($12/month).

EDIT: 4(!) OF COURSE green/no-SOPA/no-FCC-TollNet/no-loose-fundamentalist-arbitrary-definition-of-what-is-porn

EDIT: See post #5 changing title to "I'm looking for a reliable ffmpeg-friendly web host. Any ideas/stories?"