Enjoy web pages, video, music & parcel audio: bookmarks, media guide & more!
BRIGHT TV
A Bright TV lets you browse the web, watch videos, and listen to music within Second Life.
Bookmark your favourite URLs, and explore the built-in Media Guide to find material of all kinds.
And your Bright TV will work anywhere. You don't need to own the land on which you use it.
BRIGHT RADIO
The Bright Radio lets you set and change "parcel music": the background music visitors hear while they are on your land.
While sound from the TV is localised - getting quieter the further you are from the source - this parcel music is heard by everyone at the same volume: perfect for your own home, or the largest public venue.
Bookmark your favourite music streams to build your own, menu driven, audio library: or choose from the list of recommended Internet radio stations we maintain at the Bright Corporation website, which your radio can download on demand.
ACCESS AND SECURITY
Rez as many TVs and radios as you wish.
You can configure each to be usable only by you, only by group members, or by anyone.
You control which bookmarks are available, but can let others choose which of these to play.
And don't worry that you, or a visitor, might leave a TV on pointlessly annoying others. If the TV is not being watched (with no one within twenty metres) it will quietly switch itself off after fifteen minutes.
RADIO AERIALS
Your radio uses a separate aerial to change the parcel music on your land. A single aerial will serve any number of radios.
You can even configure your aerial to support Bright Radios belonging to other members of the land group, or even to anyone at all. If you do, they'll be able to use their own Bright Radios on your land. This might be useful if you rent space on your land to tenants, for instance.
Or if you are the tenant, you may still be able to use your Bright Radio if the landowner has set up a publicly accessible aerial. And even if they haven't, the aerial is copyable and transferable: if they agree, you can give them an aerial to set up for you.
SHARING BOOKMARKS
If you have access to hosted public web space, you can create lists of bookmarks to keep online. This means that if you rez multiple TVs or radios, you can configure them to use the same lists. You can even give the URL of the list to others, allowing them to share your choices.
MEDIA IN SECOND LIFE
Please note that Second Life cannot play all audio or video streams, and some streams depend on other software installed on your computer, so different users may see different results.
Whether a given URL will play does not depend on the device used to play it - all SL TVs and radios simply pass URLs to the SL viewer itself for reproduction - so we are afraid we cannot help with playing particular streams.
But a huge amount of media of all types is broadcast through the net, so there is something for everyone: and any URL which the SL viewer on your computer can play, it can play through your Bright TV and Radio.
Drag the object "Bright TV and Radio boxed" onto the ground to rez it. Right-click it, click "Open" to display its contents window, and click the "Copy To Inventory" button at the bottom. This will create a new folder in your inventory containing the following:
Bright Radio
Bright Radio Aerial
Bright TV
Bright TV and Radio note
Drag the object "Bright TV" from your inventory onto the ground to rez it.
You will see a row of four buttons across the bottom. From left to right, these are:
1. POWER: Click to switch on and off.
2. HOME: Loads the Bright TV Home Screen.
3. BOOKMARKS: Displays the bookmarks menu.
4. SETTINGS: Displays the TV's settings menu.
Click the first (power) button to switch on your TV.
This is the first thing you'll see when you switch on your TV, and you can return to it at any time by clicking the second (home) button.
The Home Screen shows "Quick Reference" information explaining the controls, and links to "Online Help", and the "Media Guide".
Online Help has a links to several useful sources of information published by Linen Labs, plus the full text of the manual you are currently reading.
The Media Guide is a menu driven introduction to media of all kinds for you to enjoy inside Second Life. It will link you to live TV broadcasting, films, music, reference sources, and much more.
And if you want something we haven't covered, the Home Screen also carries a link to Google: search the entire World Wide Web!
Click the third (bookmarks) button to display a menu like this one:
*** MY TV BOOKMARKS ***
1. Google
2. YouTube
3. Wikipedia
4. Sample YouTube Video
5. Sample Bright TV Video
6. Bright Recommended Music
(Memory: 28643b, Runtime: 0.18h)
[1] [2] [3]
[4] [5] [6]
[<] [^] [>]
The menu will show up to 9 bookmarks on each page: click [<] and [>] to browse through the pages if there are more than one.
Clicking [^] will take you back if you opened this menu from another menu, or close the main menu.
To follow a bookmark, just click the appropriately numbered button. Your chosen media will play, and the menu will stay on your screen. Channel hop until you find something you like!
You can use chat to try media from any URL, even if it isn't bookmarked. Even if you plan to bookmark it, it is a good idea to test it this way first.
Just type "/1 MEDIA" followed by the URL you are interested in. For instance, to load the Second Life website:
/1 MEDIA http://secondlife.com
If the URL refers to a pure audio stream, it may still play through your TV. Try /1 MEDIA... first, but if you hear nothing, this alternative is available:
/1 AUDIO http://someurl.com/someaudio.ogg
Using /1 AUDIO... will load the Bright TV's "audio player", and embed the URL in an HTML5 <audio> tag.
Please bear in mind that Second Life uses its built-in browser to play media through the TV, and a separate audio player for parcel music set through the radio, so you may find audio streams which play through one, but not the other.
Note also that for security, this /1 will only work for you: the TV will ignore chat from other avatars. It will also ignore chat which doesn't begin with a prefix it understands (like /1 MEDIA), so if you use /1... to talk to other devices, it will not mistake what you say for a URL.
(NOTE: Always test a URL using chat before bookmarking it - see above.)
The bookmarks menu reads its bookmarks from a notecard inside your TV.
To change it, right-click the TV, click "Open" on the pop-up menu to display its contents window, and double-click the "BOOKMARKS" notecard to open it:
TITLE: My TV Bookmarks
* Please add your bookmarks below.
Google | http://google.com
YouTube | http://youtube.com
(...etc)
Change the text after TITLE: as you please. If it longer than 30 characters, only the first 30 will be displayed.
Then delete lines carrying bookmarks you don't want, and add lines to create new bookmarks. For instance, to add a bookmark to the Second Life website, add:
Second Life | http://secondlife.com
You can put AUDIO before URLs exactly as you did while testing them with "/1" (see above):
Some Audio | AUDIO http://someurl.com/someaudio.ogg
The bookmarks will appear on the menu in the same order they appear in the notecard. If the names are more than 30 characters long, only the first 30 characters will be shown.
Lines beginning with an asterisk (*) will be ignored by the TV. You can use asterisks to insert comments (as shown above), or to temporarily disable a bookmark without deleting it:
* Second Life | http://secondlife.com
When you have finished editing the notecard, click "SAVE", and then close it. The TV will reset: click the power button to switch it back on. If you have made any mistakes editing the notecard, the TV will warn you: edit it again to fix them. But if all is well, your new bookmarks will be listed.
Instead of adding all your bookmarks to the "BOOKMARKS" notecard, you can create new notecards to define separate submenus of bookmarks.
Let us say you wish to add a submenu of useful reference sites to your TV. Create a new notecard, and give it a meaningful name (without spaces) - say, "REFERENCE". Then add the following lines:
TITLE: Reference Sites
Wictionary | http://wiktionary.org
Internet Archive | http://archive.org
WolframAlpha | http://wolframalpha.com
Drop this new notecard into your TV. Then add the following line to the main "BOOKMARKS" notecard, remembering that the notecard name is case sensitive:
Reference Sites | NOTECARD REFERENCE
When you click the bookmarks button, the main menu of bookmarks from the "BOOKMARKS" notecard will be displayed - including "Reference Sites". Select this, and a submenu of the bookmarks from the "REFERENCE" notecard will appear. Select a bookmark from this, or click "^" to return to the main menu.
NOTECARD... bookmarks can be added to any notecard, linking them into a menu system with as many levels as you like.
You can even load a submenu using /1 in chat, much as you might load a a URL (see above). For example, you can type:
/1 NOTECARD REFERENCE
(This feature is a little more advanced, and won't be useful to everyone, so if you don't find it interesting, by all means skip it.)
If you have access to publicly hosted web space, instead of defining a submenu in a notecard, you can define it in an ordinary text file, and keep it online.
You can write anything in the text file you can write in a notecard. To link to it, use a bookmark like this:
Fictional Jane's Favourites | DOWNLOAD http://fictionaljaneswebsite/janesbookmarks.txt
The advantage of doing this is that if you have multiple TVs or radios, they can all download bookmarks from the same file, leaving you only one list to maintain.
You can even give the URL of your text file to other people, allowing them to access the latest version of your bookmarks submenu at any time.
And you can add DOWNLOAD... style bookmarks to the text files, linking them together into an online menu system.
Finally, downloadable submenus are also accessible using "/1" in chat:
/1 DOWNLOAD http://janeswebsite/janesbookmarks.txt
Click the fourth (settings) button to display the following menu:
*** BRIGHT TV SETTINGS ***
Allow access to the OWNER, GROUP, or ANYONE?
Button Use: OWNER
Web Links*: OWNER
Control Bar: OWNER
* Link use changes require restart.
(Memory: 32643b, Runtime: 1.76h)
[Button Use] [Web Links] [Control Bar]
These buttons determine who is allowed access to specific features. Click the buttons to cycle between OWNER, GROUP, and ANYONE.
* Button Use: Determines who can click the TV buttons. (Note: the settings button will only ever be available to you.)
* Web Links: Determines who can click links within a web page displayed on the TV. (Changes to this setting will only take effect the next time the TV is switched on.)
* Control Bar: Determines who can use the "control bar" - a bar shown by the Second Life viewer over the top of a displayed web page or video, which can accept manually entered URLs, or play, reload, or stop media.
The TV is modifiable, so you can resize it.
Right click, and click "Edit" from the pop-up menu to open the edit window. Click the "Object" tab and type in a new X size to set its width, or just drag one of the editing cubes which appear around the TV.
The TV will then reset itself. It will adjust its height to match the new width: setting its overall height such that the screen portion is half as tall as it is wide.
This is because the screen needs a 2:1 aspect ratio in order to display images without stretching them. The Second Life web browser will distort the picture if the width:height ratio is not a power of two.
(The TV will also keep itself 10cm thick, and at least 1m wide. It can be difficult to use the controls if they are too tiny.)
Drag the object "Bright Radio" from your Inventory onto the ground to rez it.
You will see a status indicator on the front.
If this says "LIVE AERIAL", then there is already a live aerial on this parcel of land: either you have already set this up yourself, or the landowner has set one up. Skip ahead to "USING THE RADIO".
If it says "NO AERIAL", then either there is no existing aerial, or it is switched off.
If you have already rezzed one, make sure it is switched on. If you think the landlord has already installed one, ask them to switch it on.
But if no aerial has yet been set up, you'll need to do that next.
Drag the object "Bright Radio Aerial" from your inventory onto the ground to rez it.
The aerial will try to switch itself on. If it succeeds, the tip will start glowing in different rainbow colours: skip ahead to the next section.
If it fails, it will explain why. There are two reasons this might happen:
1. If there is already an aerial which will support your radio, you will hear:
There is already a live aerial on this land.
This means that the aerial is not needed. As only one aerial may be switched on at once, you may as well delete it. (But of course, keep the orginal in your Inventory in case you need it in the future.)
2. If you do not own the land, you will hear:
SORRY, YOU DO NOT OWN THIS LAND.
SL protects land settings, including parcel music.
Only the landowner's objects can change them.
If the land is personally owned by another avatar, the next line will say:
This land is owned by another avatar.
But if the land is group owned, the next lines will be:
This land is owned by a group.
The aerial must be deeded to the group.
If the land is group owned, and you are able to deed objects to the group, right-click the aerial, and click "Edit" to display its edit window. Click to enable "[X] Share", and then click the "Deed" button. The aerial will reset, then switch on.
But if the land is personally owned by someone else, or if it is group owned and you can't deed to the group, you will not be able to set up the aerial yourself.
The aerial is copyable and transferable, so you could offer a copy to the landowner, and ask them to set it up for you: but naturally, it is up to them whether or not to do this.
Click the aerial to display its settings menu. If it is on, you will see this:
*** BRIGHT AERIAL SETTINGS ***
The aerial is: ON
Serving Bright Radios belonging to: OWNER
(Please switch OFF before changing access.)
(Memory: 34827b, Runtime: 0.24h)
[OFF]
Clicking [OFF] to switch the aerial off. Whatever parcel music is currently set will continue playing, but Bright Radios will display "NO AERIAL" and be unusable while the aerial is off.
Clicking the aerial while it is off allows you to control who can access it. The settings menu will look like this:
*** BRIGHT AERIAL SETTINGS ***
The aerial is: OFF
Serving Bright Radios belonging to: OWNER
(Memory: 34827b, Runtime: 0.24h)
[ON]
[OWNER] [GROUP] [ANYONE]
The bottom row of buttons determine whose Bright Radios will be allowed to set parcel music: only those which belong to you the OWNER, those belonging to the same GROUP as the radio, or ANYONE.
Out of the box, the aerial will only work for your own radios. But if you wish, you can allow other people to rez and use their own Bright Radios. This can be useful if, for instance, you have tenants renting space on your land.
Clicking [ON] will switch the aerial back on, allowing Bright Radios (belonging to people you have granted access) to work again.
There are three buttons on the front of the radio:
1. BOOKMARKS: Display the bookmarks menu.
This works exactly like the bookmarks menu on the TV - see above.
2. WAVE: Change the colour of (or disable) the animated wave.
While the radio is on, an animated colour wave will be displayed.
3. SETTINGS: Display the radio's settings menu.
Click the settings button to display the following menu:
*** BRIGHT RADIO SETTINGS ***
Allowed to use this radio: OWNER
(Memory: 27635b, Runtime: 0.08h)
[OWNER] [GROUP] [ANYONE]
Click a button to determine who can use the radio: just you, the OWNER, members of the GROUP to whch the radio is set, or ANYONE.
(This only allows access to the bookmarks menu: only you can change the wave animation or radio settings.)
Similarly to the TV, the radio will play audio streams you specify in chat - but to play them through the radio, use "/2":
/2 AUDIO http://someurl.com/someaudio.ogg
Adding bookmarks to the radio is very like adding them to the TV. To bookmark the URL above, edit the "BOOKMARKS" notecard, and add:
Some Audio | http://someurl.com/someaudio.ogg
Notecards in the TV and the radio use the same format, so you can cut and paste bookmarks between them, or even copy entire notecards from one into the other.
Any bookmarks which use prefixes (like "AUDIO", or "NOTECARD") will be correctly understood by both. The problem arises when sharing bookmarks which don't have a prefix:
The Pretend Web Page | http://pretend-page/index.html
Radio Fictional | http://radio-fictional/ourstream.ogg
The TV will assume these are both visual media URLs, and the radio will assume they are both audio streams.
So if you are creating bookmarks which might be used through either a TV or a radio, use prefixes. The bookmarks above can be written:
The Pretend Page | MEDIA http://pretend-page/index.html
Radio Fictional | AUDIO http://radio-fictional/ourstream.ogg
Now they will be correctly understood by both devices. The TV will generate a web page and embed "Radio Fictional" in an HTML5
This is particularly important if you are setting up text files full of bookmarks to be used as DOWNLOAD submenus - and doubly so if you are giving the URL to your text file to other people. Even if you tell them that the bookmarks will only work with the TV, or only with the radio, they may try either. By prefixing every URL, you will make things far less confusing for them if they do.
If you test a URL (using /1 or /2 - see above) and it won't play, there are a number of possible reasons.
1. There is a mistake in the URL.
Double-check the spelling and punctuation.
2. The URL is fine, but the content provider is just not broadcasting at the moment.
Not all media runs 24/7. Listen to the media outside Second Life to make sure there is something to see or hear at the moment, or just try again later.
3. The URL has died.
Media URLs change very frequently, and many of those shared between Second Life residents worked once, but have long since been discontinued.
Try the URL outside Second Life to make sure there is something to hear at the moment.
Doing a Google search for the name of the media provider, or the old URL itself, will sometimes find a new URL if it has simply been changed: but if the media has gone, sadly, it's gone.
4. The URL points to a playlist file, or other intermediate mechanism, rather than the stream you expected.
For example, most "play now" links to radio stations on the web take you to tiny "playlist" text files, rather than the raw audio streams - the stream URL you actually need being *in* the playlist file. It is easy to mistake the URL of a playlist file (or other intermediate file) for that of the stream itself.
Playlists often end in .pls (for WinAmp Playlist), .m3u (for MP3 URL), or .xspf (XML Shareable Playlist Format). If a link directs you to such a file, right-click the link in your browser, and click "Save link as..." to download it. Then just open the file in a text editor, and you will find the raw stream URLs inside.
Other examples of multiple layers of redirection can be hard to find your way through, though. Many content providers deliberately hide the URLs of their streams, precisely to prevent people linking to them directly.
5. Second Life cannot play the format.
This may be because it can't play it at all, or because it can, but only with the help of "plug-in" software it needed on your computer. This information is technical, and subject to change, but the Second Life Knowledge Base and Forums are good sources of help with streams and plugins.
A plug-in that Second Life needs to play a lot of media is called "Adobe Flash". Even if you have this installed already, it may not help, as Second Life requires a specific version. See the section below for Linden Lab's advice on how to install it.
Remember that SL uses different software to play audio streams as "parcel music" (through the radio), than to play through its built-in web browser (through the TV). Streams which work in one may not work in the other.
(The following advice was written by JEREMY LINDEN, of Second Life's creators Linden Lab, and was taken from https://community.secondlife.com/knowledgebase/english/how-to-use-adobe-flash-in-second-life-viewer-40-and-later-r1406/ on 2018-09-05)
"Starting with Second Life Viewer 4.0, the internal web browser of the Second Life Viewer has been updated to use the Chromium Embedded Framework. This allows content creators to use a much wider array of web technologies in their products for Second Life, including Adobe Flash. However, in order to use Flash in the Second Life Viewer, you must first install a specific version of the Adobe Flash Player on your computer.
To install the Adobe Flash Player on your computer for use with Second Life:
Make sure that plugins are enabled in the Second Life Viewer by choosing Me > Preferences from the top menu bar, then clicking the Setup tab of the Preferences window. Enable plugins should be checked.
Visit http://get.adobe.com/flashplayer/otherversions/ using your web browser.
Under Step 1, select your operating system.
Under Step 2, select FP 20 for Opera and Chromium - PPAPI.
Click the Download now button to download the Flash Player installer.
Run the Adobe Flash Player installer and follow the instructions onscreen to complete the installation.
Restart the Second Life Viewer.
You may now view Flash content in the Second Life Viewer's web browser, and on Shared Media-enabled objects in the Second Life world."
* You can create a bookmark which will jump directly to any YouTube video, and play it full-screen. The following is a link to Linden Lab's "Welcome to Second Life" video: just change the "0LC-HO0ljN0" at the end to the sequence you see at the end of the URL when you are playing your chosen YouTube video through your web browser. (YouTube has changed the syntax for full-screen viewing on the past, and may again, but this has been working for a while at time of writing.)
https://www.youtube.com/embed/0LC-HO0ljN0
* Hovering your mouse pointer over many videos embedded in web pages will reveal their controls, and these will often include a clickable icon to play the video full-screen. They are much easier to watch this way.
* By adding a notecard which cannot be reached from the menu system starting from "BOOKMARKS", you can effectively add a private submenu to your TV or radio, even if you allow public access to the bookmarks button. Just use "/1 NOTECARD..." to load it: no one else can do this.
* If you find a "Play Now!" (or similar) link to audio you like while browsing using your normal (non-SL) web browser, the link will not usually point to the audio stream itself. Try right-clicking the link and choosing "Save link as...". If this downloads a ".pls", ".m3u", ".xspf" file, you have found a "playlist" - a tiny text file containing the URL of the actual audio stream. (Or sometimes more than one - usually carrying the same stream in different formats.)
* Visit shoutcast.com for a huge list of streams you can play using your Bright Radio. Again, the actual stream addresses are held in playlist files: but at the time of writing, Shoutcast shows a purpose-built download icon next to each stream name to allow you to download the playlist you need. The audio stream addresses are inside.
* Visit https://incompetech.com/, website of Kevin MacLeod, and source of a wife range on excellent original music released on Creative Commons licenses, some of which we've made available through the Bright TV and Radio.
Shan Bright
Chief Executive Officer