Windows uses lots of little bits and scraps of program that are treated as "objects." Some of them can't run by themselves, but can be "clipped into" a "host" package. The "host" sort of does the bookkeeping to tell the object it carries when to start, stop, or spin its wheels. I'm guessing a bit, but I believe the svshost is the package that can contain the snippets to make them work.

A crude analogy would be that the "host" is the bucket that has the handles that the system can grab onto, but the bucket can have any color of paint in it that's needed. Lots of "processes" and "services" may be turned on and off by service hosts that are all similarly named, but that carry different innards to determine which services they work on. You have to figure out what's in the bucket to tell whether that service can be turned on or off.

But that's really just a guess.

John