RTSP in SL

I asked in resident answers but had no luck ... hoping that maybe one of you movie experts will have some advice.

Big Brother US is about to start and I'd love to be able to stream the live feeds into SL. The Big Brother US feeds are RTSP, with a URL ending in .rm which I think means they are Real Media. You do have to log in, but I can remain logged in on my computer and don't have to log in every time I pull up the feeds in RealPlayer. I have tried three or four tv/video systems so far, one of which supposedly DID play RTSP but that one I could never get to work at all. I'd be grateful for any recommendations of systems to try or suggestions as to how to make this work. I've read about streams from RL into SL for conferences and so on so ... shouldn't this be able to happen?

Thanks so much!

SL vid streams need to be readable by Quicktime. If it won't play in Quicktime player, it won't play in SL.

Yup unfortunatley there is a limited number of quicktime streams out there, most are windows media, real media etc

Shoot! I guess I was paying too little attention to that sneaky .rm at the end of the URL

Oh well - thanks so much for dashing my hopes! Seriously - at least now I will stop buying tv after tv only to curse at them!

If big brother US is anything like the UK equivalent it's no big loss.

The media compatibility issue regarding formats useable in SL are only limited by the codex available within QuickTime.. as you can asign virtually ANY media to play in QuickTime, then the client pluggin will take over the conversions.

RSTP will and do work in SL! Check out


What is potentially stopping you seeing them is your own connection or the delivery server connection. Most RSTP media demands a constant bandwidth, packet loss 0%, latency 0% and ping of less than 200ms to maintain the stream.

There are 2 basic types of stream with RSTP, one where you are seeing the stream start, from the point when you start the player...... or two, where you see/hear the part of the that is time based relevant. The difference is like going to a movie theatre late, while the movie is showing, you don't get to see what happened beforehand (mulit-cast or uni-cast), and.. like watching a DVD at home, you choose what you see.

Thanks so much AWM! I guess then it is a matter of not enough computer power ... frustrating as I can run the feeds while in SL and have no problems at all - just not from WITHIN SL. Bah!

You may have to balance the bandwidth in SL to see RSTP movies, and in fact for any movies. You should checkout your actual bandwidth (remember thats dynamic) and set the bandwidth in the client (preferences, network tab) to 2/3rds of that speed, upto a max of around 1mbps, this will throttle the client, albiet slowly, which should be enough for the average user, this will leave sufficient bandwidth for the OS to stream the movie before the cleint renders it.

Also checkout that you have set the QuickTime player (in preferences, connection tab) to your connection speed and to allow for a small cache as this will help. What remains, is the dynamics of the internet and you in getting to see movies.