Making Your Own Theater

Have you even wanted to make your own movie theater?  Maybe even a home version just for some friends?

First you need a screen -- well of course!  A simple flattened prim will do or something more complex with an invisible prim as the actual screen. It is fairly easy to find instructions for getting media on a prim; the tough part -- for me anyway -- was figuring out how to get rid of YouTube's "next related video" insistence. Most of those films were SO not related.  That's definitely not an elegant way to present your work.

After a lot of experimentation and searching, logic won out and I discovered the method by myself. So of course I wanted to share. It's easy when you know the steps.

First you need to make a playlist or add the videos you want to an existing one. See this page for step by step instructions.


You can't just link to your playlist URL to your screen; I tried that and simply got a static webpage with a bunch of thumbnails. You have to be a little tricky.

From your CHANNEL page click on the "View as public" choice (top right). The page will change and you will no longer see your page as a manager. This is important!

Once you see your channel as the general public does, click on Playlists in the menu.

From the playlists choices pick the one you want to be in your theater, then click to start watching the films in that list.

The URL in the location bar at the top of the screen is what you have been after all along. Copy the whole thing!

Back in world paste that URL into the "Home Page" area in the Media Settings - General tab. You will need to adjust the height and width of the webpage to fit nicely on your screen. My sizes should be a good starting point. Don't forget the offsets *wink*.

I turned off all user options in Customize so there is no chance of the viewers clicking on something and taking the screen off to some unassociated content. All eight films in my playlist play in order and then loop back to the beginning.

Now I don't actually expect someone to watch all eight films, but just knowing it works makes me happy.

The theater isn't in Second Life, it is in OpenSim on a grid I have there.

MID DECEMBER NOTE:    Current hypergrid address -- end of Dec 2014 is:

login.greatcanadiangrid.ca:8002:Parkville

In your viewer, open your Map (CTRL-M) and paste the above into the search field while on any other hypergrid-enabled grid. 

 This will take you to the default location on the ground. I put a teleporter there to get to the city and the theater.  

If someone is reading this in 2015, then see if you can make your way to the Great Canadian Grid. From there find Parkville. And good luck. The hypergrid IS the new frontier! 


You will find that the ground level looks very much like the Peaceful Valley you know from LEA7. Well, similar anyway with only things I have made!