DVDs

I've wanted to find out more about DVDs in SL, but some basic questions Ive had some difficulty getting answers for.

I rent a skybox. If I buy a DVD player and deed it to the land owner's group, can I play movies on my (landlord's) television? Or do I need my own, separate screen? ... since im not the land owner, I'd need to deed it anyway just to get it to work - I think?

*is confused*

One media stream can be defined per parcel. Any devices on the parcel that have tp be able to change that stream, like a DVD player, have to be deeded to the land group that owns the parcel. A "DVD Player" is simply a scripted device with a notecard that lists various QuickTime media URL's that it can plug into the parcel media URL.

If there's more than one rented place in the same parcel, any tenant who changes the stream for the parcel will change it for all of the residents there.

Ack! So this is much more useul for a land owner than it is for someone like me, renting a box with many other boxes on the same parcel. OK ... now I get it. Thanks so much!

Are you sure you and your neighbors share the same parcel? Many skybox landlords will give each box its own little parcel. It's still group owned land, so you have to deed your entertainment center/TV/Radio to the group, but you can set your media to what you like.

So we're lead to believe by the documentation, but in fact, 'tain't necessarily so. The relevant LSL function, llParcelMediaCommandList(), takes an interesting argument, PARCEL_MEDIA_COMMAND_AGENT, that qualifies all the rest of the command list to apply only to that one agent. So it's possible for different avatars to be watching different media streams--even on different textures--on the same parcel at the same time. I read about this a long time ago and only just tested it out.

Unfortunately for the purposes of this thread, that's all probably academic: I very much doubt that the average "DVD Player" one might buy would use this functionality.

End result, I'll have to get ahold of my landlady and see what the deal is. Do I have my own parcel in the sky? And, for the store owner, does the DVD player I consider have that technology?

Thanks for the input guys, Im glad I didn't just pop L$500 and walk home with the thing.

Yes, the new media commands offer that possibility. But most of the in-world content right now for doing parcel media was created before that was a possibility. I'd love to know some content creators that have already tamed those new commands and managed to set up multiple streams like that. As you say, it *should* be possible with that LSL command. Humm...

Actually, there's been at least one doing this for quite a while: AWM Mars. I just never really cared enough to try scripting it myself until today. It seems to behave exactly as one would expect, from a scripting standpoint. The problem is that the possibilities are kind of mind-boggling, beyond just the simple "everybody near *this* screen sees *this* stream at the same time" that I know is available already. More complex functionality would come with more potential for UI bewilderment.

Interesting tip. I never really played around with the media parcel functions much. Good to know should I ever have the need.