Greets! -- spell out those acronyms, please. If we are trying to educate people on services etc... dont assume they know what everything means.
Personally, I have worked on one site that was hosted on a (dv) server with Media Temple (for three months.. I was only filling in), and had nothing but good experiences with them.
Their prices are definitely high though, so I don't know if I'd call them exactly startup-friendly. I wasn't the one paying for the site I worked with, but if I had to pay for it myself, I'd probably look elsewhere.