First, this is fabulous. The idea, the execution, the detailed instructions...just a great artistic endeavor. And like chaotess, I don't usually attempt such intricate downloads. I consider myself 'technically challenged'. But after reading your instructions four times, I thought I can do this. So, thank you for giving me that confidence.
My problem: Your channels show up on the sims tv. And they get the skill point. But the trailer isn't showing up. The screen is blue. When I downloaded the trailer, I put it in a temporary file on the desk top. To 'install' it, I dragged it from the temp file to the TvXXXX file. I didn't know how else to do it. Did I do something wrong? or is my system just not up to it.
Thanks again, SD. Even if they end up watching a blue screen, I'm going to keep this. The children can finally get a little headstart on some of those college skills. And on behalf of everyone, thanks for all your patience with us.

Thank you for your wonderful encouragement, Melba, I really appreciate that! I also appreciate your question because if you are asking then it is likely that other folks have run into the same problem but have not yet asked.

I am sure that you have copied the videos to the correct folder or directory because you are getting a blue screen rather than the screen shown in the first attachment below. To show this symptom, I removed all videos from the TvCleaning folder. The same symptom would occur if you didn't have a TvCleaning folder at all, of it it were in the wrong place. As you can see, the picture showing the internal name of the TV station with a big red X across it is quite distinctive. Just like your blue screen problem, the Sims will still gain skill and fun while watching - but its not too much fun for you to watch!

But the symptoms you describe suggest that one of your Broadcast.ini files has been updated, but not the other. The game is strange in that way, it will pick up some of the information that it needs from only one updated Broadcast.ini - enough to display the channel in the TV selector - but it will not know where to find the video folder, and so you get the flashing blue screen.

I see that you are using Bon Voyage. Please check again that you have copied the new Broadcast.ini to the correct place in C:\Program Files. This is a long path, and it is easy to get confused because there is more than one Config folder in the game's directory tree. For you the exact path you need with Bon Voyage is C:\Program Files\EA GAMES\The Sims 2 Bon Voyage\TSData\Res\UserData\Config, as shown in the second attachment below.

Of course it is also worth checking that you have an updated Broadcast.ini in My Documents\EA Games\The Sims 2\Config, but because the channel selector is working I think the most likely problem is with the Broadcast.ini in the Program Files tree.

I would suggest that no matter how old your computer, if it can play the Sims 2 at all then it will show something on your game's TV screen, even if the picture or sound freezes, or drops out of synchronization. But if you are in any doubt, try just using either of the two Ajax commercials in TvCleaning, because their file size is the smallest of all - and I can't imagine that the built in Sims 2 videos would be significantly less demanding on your computer system.

In any event, please try double checking the Broadcast.ini installation first, and let me know if this fixes the problem.

You, Sir, are an absolute genius. I made the copy of the original broadcast ok. But when I extracted the new one, I smushed everything together. So now I had one 'Program Files' and one 'ProgramFiles'. So much for my new found technical savvy.
Again, thanks for your patience, help, and a wonderful new addition to the game.

Great! Thanks for your patience too, and for getting back to me with the results.

I only downloaded one trailer per type of skill to begin with, since I didn't want to overload the server. I came back today to get a couple more, and I clicked on "Featured Downloads," since I assumed that anything this wonderful would be there. I was surprised not to find it there. I wonder if they're not featuring entries for the contest, since that might seem to bias the voting. Anyway, just wanted to thank you again for a truly fabulous addition to the game!

Thank you Corylea, that is a very high compliment. Yes, I think it would bias the outcome to feature an upload before the contest results are posted. There has been some discussion about whether the winner of a contest should be featured - here - and Echo gave a comprehensive reply at Post #75.

Please feel free to download as many videos as you want, and when you want. There should be no problem with server overloads now that I have moved them to my domain.

Someone just reminded me... please remember when you install a new stuff pack or expansion such as Teen Style Stuff you will need to update its Broadcast.ini file. Otherwise your Sims will be watching a blue screen!

Redo Installation steps (4) and (5) above and you will be back in business.

thanks for this impressive and wonderful addition to the game! i imagine it took a lot of time and patience to create this...

unfortunately i get the error you described above - the red cross on the screen and no movies but the skill increase works just fine. could it be that this doesn't work on a mac? i could easily figure out the analogs folder to the ones you described for pc, and thus am quite sure i put the avi-files in the correct place: users/user name/documents/ea games/the sims 2/movies/broadcast
but maybe i got it wrong?
is there any mac user out there who knows if this is a specific problem of the operating system? like with the camera hacks?

i still love the idea of the new stations with skills and think i will keep it anyway :lovestruc but since i consider myself a genuine film geek it would be really nice to actually see the clips

As described above, the red cross on the screen indicates that the game cannot locate the videos or the video folders as they are specified in the two active copies of the broadcast.ini files. To me this would suggest that either the video folders are not where Broadcast.ini says they are, or that Sims 2 on the Mac platform simply cannot deal with external video.

As implied in the initial post, unfortunately I know almost nothing about Macs. It has been noted at Post #75 of the Mechanical Skill Gain channel that custom channels are not compatible with the the Mac platform, so this does not bode well! I am using the same methods that the Mechanical Skill Gain channel uses - some minor patches to a copy of the extracted Cooking Channel - so the results would likely be identical.

But I am curious if there was a pre-existing directory structure present in users/user name/documents/ea games/the sims 2/movies/broadcast before you added these custom videos. If there is such a structure, what would happen if you copied a video into one of the original directories?

Also, in your original Broadcast.ini file, how were the channels specified? Perhaps my pc version of Broadcast.ini needs to be modified to whatever naming conventions are used in the original file? You are welcome to upload copies of your original and modified Broadcast.ini files to this thread to see if someone has any further ideas.

Wow, thanks for the quick answer!

1) Yes, the directory structure was exactly like this: users/user name/documents/ea games/the sims 2/movies/broadcast. And the sub-folders in the broadcast folder were as you described them, too. But interestingly - and in contrast to the radio stations for example - there isn't any file in any of the pre-existing tv station folders, they all appear to be empty. I am enough of a computer geek to know that there are invisible files on a computer but not good enough to remember how to make them visible...

2) I copied one of your avi files in my sports channel and had my sims watch it for a couple of sim-hous. It was all normal and no custom video showed up so far. But I will test it for a bit longer next time.

3) My original Broadcast.ini file seems to be exactly as your modified version (except the extra channels of course) I attach it as a text document so you can check yourself. I also attach the new Broadcast.ini file in case there is any change to what it was when I downloaded it.

I hope I can help to figure it out - I will have a look at the mac forums, maybe there is some useful information

On the PC version there are no hidden files in these directories, and they are all empty by default.

On the PC version, dropping a video into any of these directories will cause the game to play it, so the fact that you never see a new video in your Sports channel would suggest that indeed the Mac version is unable to play external videos. It would seem that Maxis (or whoever did the Mac conversion) replicated the directory structure of the PC, but did not actually write the code that would enable external videos to be played.

Thank you for following up on this. Indeed the original Mac version looks the same as the PC one, so I do not see any obvious reason that the game would not play external videos because of a difference in - say - Broadcast.ini syntax. My modified Broadcast.ini looks correct also.

I'm sorry I cannot help you get this working. At this point it certainly does appear that the Mac version cannot play external videos. Yes, if you find anything definitive on the Mac forums please let us know and post a link.

thank you

Wow! 5! New channels wow! And 50 odd posters! Yeesh! This should be featured! Not just picked! my crappy stuff gets picked! This is fantastic! I wish I could thank twice!

Thank you for the encouragement, webmessia and s_sut. Of course I wouldn't say no, but personally I would not choose to feature this project. Creating the channels themselves was quite easy, not even requiring BHAV programming. The bulk of the work was in locating and successfully converting the old movie trailers, and although I planned to do more it is not surprising that I have never found the time to do so again.

But as for the trailers, they are a bit outside of the MTS2 mandate as I understand it. MTS2 does not typically host Sims 2 videos, let alone videos that do not feature Sims content in them at all. I really felt like I was walking on the edge when I did this project, but the fact that none of the video is actually hosted here is probably why I was able to get away with it. So if you look at it that way, all that is here that really falls in the normal scope of this web site are a few quick patches and a large volume of painting recolours. Nice, but not really ground breaking as far as actually modding the Sims.

Thank you soooooooo much! This is amazing! :P

I'm glad you enjoy the project, gotchigirlsim!

*************

Today I updated SDTV_Broadcast.zip to contain a Broadcast.ini that supports the new channels introduced in FreeTime. I also uploaded a Psycho trailer by billielith. Please see the main post.

Wow, this is awesome.
Thanks a ton for this. =)
Finally! New ways to gain skill points.

-applause-

This is great. Thanks a lot!!

Thank you for the encouragment, Corby and urbanspitz!

I'm a huge fan of classic Hollywood, the studio system, and all the accoutrement's that go with that genre, so I'm making a classic Hollywood themed restaurant for my Sims. I'm going to use a lot of this in it, so thanks so much for being so committed. It all looks great.

That sounds like fun, 27, glad you like it!

this is FANTASTIC!!! I'm so happy that someone made this, seeing as i've been wanting movies rather than the old tv shows for my sims! Thanks so much!

My sims never used to watch very much tv but now they're glued to their sets -- one of them also opened a movie theater which shows your films -- so thank you very much! Thanks also for the info/link for the no glare patch -- my recolors (also vintage movie posters) used to come out looking pale -- I didn't know the reason for it and it bothered the heck out of me...

when ever i try to download the movie files it goes to internet explorer can not display this webpage and i tryed the other ones it works some one

When using these links, please right click on the movie name and then select "Save Target As...", otherwise your default multimedia player - in this case Internet Explorer - will immediately start to download and play the video.