Licensing movie streams to play in SL

The costs of streaming bandwidth is going to be huge. The cost of streaming a 90 minute movie to 30 people would buy me a reasonably decent car. Then again who is going to pay$3000 L or more to see a movie?

I don't think bandwidth prices will be an issue. For $99 you can get 1000 mb monthly. That's about 500 movies, or ~20 cents per person per movie.

I defere to your knowledge and after looking around, I see that streaming a single file less than 1 hour can cost as little as $4.95 one time fee for unlimited viewing. http://www.mpegnation.com/mnationhome/mnationhome.rsc I was considering the cost of live streaming, not file download costs.

I like Margaret's idea. I wouldn't log into SL and sit on a laggy sim with 30 other asshats, 10 of whom were griefing and throwing popcorn in my face when I can go to my local Loew's 2 blocks away with the kids and have the exact same experience for about $30 including snacks, instead of paying www.streamload.com all the money I used to pay them for SL music which was kinda wasted (but that company might be good for movies,k check it out).

But...if someone got ahold of a good movie that I'd have trouble finding in RL, an art film or some political film or something, I *would* sit in that laggy sim and watch it with them, especially if we could sit around in Margaret's diner afterwards and discuss it. That would be fun.

Ok, well if there will be no further feedback I'm going to send this off.

I would never watch anything in SL that sounds/looks good in Dolby 5.1 on a plasma tv. But, where I think there is a market for this is in the movie content that people love to "participate" in.

The first movie licensed should be Rocky Horror Picture Show.

Other applications ....

...open a Hard Rock cafe and stream music videos. Make sure the service is slow and the food is overpriced for authenticity. Steal pictures of signed guitars off of eBay and hang them on the walls. I could see someone ringing a bell at the bar like they do for at Hard Rock for 21st birthdays -- only for SL "ball" virgins, couldn't you?

...show horrible, low budget, black and white movies like Mystery Science Theater 3000 did on Comedy Central back in the day. Have your guests poke fun at the movie for an hour. Invite the original MST3K talking gum ball machine, of course. Give away prize money to the funniest commenter.

Any takers?

Well, eye candy films I wouldn't watch on tiny screen.

But films which are more mental than visual, I would

when this video streaming was introduced to SL I was reminded of the old CU-seeme days

I am surprised this has not been thought of...picture a veranda with 2 avis streaming live from their living rooms.. remember the old fish tanks?

Criterion / Fox pictures wants some real dough to allow showing of Rocky Horror. In the neighborhood of $300 per showing or 30 percent of the gross, according to their faq at rockyhorror.org. They seem be willing to make deals for "colleges." Could we convince them that SL is a college?

For a server, Id probably go with dreamhost.com. For $15.95 a month, they are already set up for DARWIN streaming and they give you 144 mbits total download per month. After that, its only $1 per megabit overage.

In fact, the ROYAL THEATER (Jiminy 175, 47) is already using them. Check it out. It's a cool place, now showing B flicks, cartoons and newsreels. Its still under construction, so dont mind the dust and occasional plywood.

The flicks that Ive attended there were real fun. The audience participation was more fun than the film!

Say hi to Chrischun, the owner, while youre there. Woot!

I just read the Community page and saw LL put my idea on the page.



Do I get dwell for my ideas on their website?

Congrats Jonny -

Any more ideas, keep them a-coming!

This site looks good im signing up later today when i have a hold of my bank card Now we just need to know about the licenses. Have you heard anything Blaze? I haven't had a reply yet.

Not yet, sent the email yesterday.

Will post as soon as I get a reply.

Just thinking, is 144 Mbits enough?

If i want to stream 5 movies to say 20 people each time will this be ok?

The bandwidth on dreamhost.com does seem cheap but is it realiable and fast? And will it be doing REAL streaming or just allowing people to d/l movie files? The thing about movies in SL is if it isnt real streaming it isnt worth it.

Dreamhost supports true streaming over RTSP and use of playlists, though they don't support realtime streaming. Realtime meaning everyone is synchronized up to the same point in the film.

If Im watching a movie and its 3/4ths done and I lose the stream, when I reconnect will I start from the beginning and have no way of going back to where I was? And whats the point to have gathering places in SL for us all to watch movies together if we are all at different spots in a movie? Short films and product/service info is about all I see practically for SL and streaming media.

Well, MPLC is of no use:

Advantages and dis-advantages abound with different setups of providing in-game video.

I actually like how on demand streaming makes it so no one has to pay attention to showtimes and drop what they were doing to go watch a movie because that's when it starts, for everyone. I've run four, full length, movie events with on demand streaming, worked perfect for the people who showed up when the event was scheduled to start, we just all clicked play at the same time. Those who arrived late, while not in sync, didn't miss any of the movie. Other work arounds exist like breaking the long video up in chunks and using LSL or a server-side playlist to control the timing, so when a new chunk starts new arrivals get "fast-forwarded" to the current part. This would be a solution to the problem of losing the stream three-fourth of the way through watching.

So decent hacks do exist for those of us who want to enjoy a 24/7 video based service but don't want to deal with the overheard and bandwidth increase incurred by real-time streaming.

Right, I've done that as well, then had a person or two drop their stream halfway thru and had to restart.

Right, but its not the movie itself that adds value, its sharing the 'experience' of the movie 'together' at the same time (sure within reason) that makes it 'more' fun. Look at how LL is advertising this technology: "Host "Mystery Science Theater 3000"-style parties". What was key to MST3K being funny? It was timing. Making funny comments during the movie as you watched it. This wont be happening in 99.9% of the movie houses in SL due to no timing or sync. And I just pointed out MST3K as an example. Its not about commedy or silly remarks, its about sharing the experience together. On demand is fine but what we have is basically a bunch of people sitting around EACH with their own TV and VCR all starting their movies at different times with no rewind or fast forward, not a theater experience usually.

Its not perfect and requires more work breaking up the movie and modifying a script for each and every movie. But none the less its something.

But how many people are jumping through those hoops to do this? By the time you chop a movie up into segments, try to get the script to time the pieces correctly and get everyone together, I would contend that the person doing this is having alot less fun due to the work and preplanning required. Its a start I will admit but I dont see it happening, at least not on the scale LL is making it appear.

If anyone has properly hinted movies that you have the rights to, THat can be streamed, not on demand style. I have a darwin streaming server and the badwidth.
Ide like to have a playlist setup for 24 hours of video or at least 12. And allow people to join in any time, but only see where the movie currently is not from the start.
I just dont have any content.

No the do not support LIVE streaming, as in from a webcam etc.

There streaming will sync everyone.

I just came across this thread, so I thought I'd throw in my 2 cents on the last comments... I'm a big mst3k fan myself

I hacked together a script that fixes the "everybody click play NOW" problem. It supports any number of avatars coming in at any time during the film, and will auto-sync the film for them to the same time as everyone else. It's only for rtsp streams, and will sometimes lag a bit due to the nature of lag and latency, but it can always be re-synced. It's a cool little hack, and it works quite well Drop by Canfield 112,8 to see it in action (use the teleporter on the floor of the store).

I'm trying to raise funds to open a free theater. I've got some more media tricks up my sleeve.

^^^^awesome work!