Don't turn off the tv

[Josepina]

When Sims finish watching tv they sometimes turn it off and sometimes leave it on. Is there a way to stop them doing it, or how they decide if they will or not. I don't have Pescado's hack to make sims turn the tv off.

[Ghost sdoj]

To the best of my knowledge it requires a mod to get them to turn the tv off, although if you have a fairly neat sim and you make that sim turn off the tv every time they stop watching they -seem- more likely to autonomously turn it off, even if someone else is still watching it. Conversely if you never make a sim turn the tv off, they seem more likely to leave it on. And a sloppy sim is more likely to leave it on even if you do try training them to turn it off. But this is primarily my own impression from what has happened in my game. I'm not vouching for the idea that all sims can be trained, just saying that it looks as though my sims could be somewhat trained.

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[Josepina]

Every sim I've tried turns the tv off but sometimes they will get up to have a shower or take out the garbage and leave it on. I had wondered if I had a hack installed but I couldn't find one related to the tv. I do have Pescado's allfixes which may have his turn tv off hack. I'll remove it and see if that helps.

[Josepina]

That worked. Now some sims turn the tv off some don't. The reason I would like them not to turn the tv off is I made some custom music tv channels and it would be cool to watch them while my sims are busy. It's no good if they keep turning it off. I'd really like for that to never be autonomous as is with the radio. Even the butler turns it off on his rounds when he should be minding his own business. So I had to fire him.

I don't want to make sloppy sims just to watch tv. But maybe some can be trained to leave the tv alone without becoming messy. As long as I have one sloppy sim on the lot I suppose I could use them.

[Josepina]

Yay! There is a mod. Always leave tv on. So if you took the time to make tv shows you and your sims would like to watch, stubborn sims won't annoy you by turning it off every 5 seconds. Or say you get a sudden urge to watch a movie and play the sims at the same time simply convert it and put it in the broadcast folder and watch it on your sims wide screen tv in hd. Envisage the awesomeness. I hope the butler takes notice. http://www.modthesims.info/download.php?t=346831

Oh and I know that tutorials on this forum say you should only have 128x128 dimensions. This is not true. They need to be multiples of 128. So you could have 256x256 or 512x512 (the latter if you are using a cinema screen) and it will look like high definition. Using anyvideoconverter to change the audio sample rate to 22050 you won't get sync problems and it will play perfectly everytime. This will also allow you to set a higher fps. 20 I think is good. And set maximum video bitrate. Set to 500 or 1000 and it will do the maximum the source file allows automatically.

Changing the audio sample rate combined with an audio bitrate of 256 gives high quality sound. So it will sound really crisp for music videos. 128 is fine for everything else.

On loading the game it catalogues the filenames only so it doesn't matter how many tv shows or channels you have or the duration of the video files and it won't affect loading times. My broadcast folder is over 5gb so far and loadtimes are no different than having no video files. The game doesn't even pause to change channels and reload a new video. In game playback is not a problem even on system heavy lots. Took a lot of test runs to figure this all out.

You can also switch videos while playing. As long as they have the same filename copy and paste a new video over the old one and you can test them out in game if you are a bit of a perfectionist.

Of course older computers or laptops might have difficulty so probably best if you have a relatively decent computer.

You could set up a music concert with a screen in back. You know how bands have video back drops on stage. Or make a commercial channel and use the cinema screen as a video bill board like we're in times square perhaps.

Or you could have a fish tank channel and put that on the cinema screen for posh sims with nothing else to do with their pitiful dosh.

Ah the possibilities.

Cheat codes for the userstartup file. This won't change the video playing but will change all subsequent videos. "tv1" for low volume up to "tv4" for maximum volume. "Mute" for mute:

alias mute "floatprop tvvolume 0" "" ""
alias tv1 "floatprop tvvolume 0.25" "" ""
alias tv2 "floatprop tvvolume 0.5" "" ""
alias tv3 "floatprop tvvolume 0.75" "" ""
alias tv4 "floatprop tvvolume 1" "" ""

There is a tutorial on this site for changing the global startup file to set the default tv volume. The default is a little low for watching movies.