Usually, when I have game problems I'm pretty good at figuring them out myself but this one had got me completely stumped. I've been trying to get the in-game television to play back video and it just won't. I've gotten it to work before on an older computer but for some reason, it just refuses now. I've edited all of the videos correctly using several different tutorials. That didn't work so I figured if I found someone's properly working video up for download I could just figure out how they made it and do the same thing. I remembered that Psychosims' had some videos that I had used before and it's here on MTS so it must work. However, weirdly, those don't seem to work now either? I don't understand why properly formatted video that is the correct file type, size, and bitrate refuses to play.

I did some testing and I've found that most videos won't even play. However, when I turn the television on to the channel where the videos are the game will freeze momentarily sometimes. Most of the time the videos have no effect except the game freeze and the television skipping that video (or at least I assume it's just skipping the video). The closest I've gotten to making it work so far is by taking a video in-game with the lowest quality in-game recording and sticking it straight into the "Commercial" folder. That had an effect at least and will give me a white or black screen that just refuses to play anything until the channel is changed... still no working video though. So obviously my game is capable of recognizing that a new video is present but it still won't play. I also want to note that I know that some graphics cards won't play video but all of the default television programs work in my game, so it isn't that.



I'm beginning to think it's an issue with the game or my computer rather than an issue with the videos being incorrectly formatted. If anyone wants to help me test my theory, could you download Psychosims' "Post Nuclear TV " and see if it works for you? Anybody had this problem?

Psychosims' TV works in my game- I was using it earlier.

Sims 2 requires the ON2 VP6 codec- usually this is installed with the game, but there might be some reason why yours has gone missing (maybe your antivirus quarantined it?). If you have Ultimate Collection, try repairing. Also add your gamedata files to your antivirus exclusions. If that fails, try reinstalling the codec- if you use a search engine to find 'ON2 VP6 codec' you should have lots of choices.

I hope this helps!

It must not have installed for whatever odd reason. However, my television still isn't working correctly. Before I put in the codec the game would just skip videos. Now, the game crashes anytime a video attempts to play. I feel like this might be progress though because I've heard of this problem but I'm not sure how to fix it. I'm still attempting to use Psychosims "Siren" video to make it work so obviously the problem isn't with the video. I'm not sure what it is now though. Any ideas?

Do the standard Maxis TV channels work correctly? Where do you have the video files installed to?

I've tried TvMusic, Commercials, and TvSports. All other channels play flawlessly. I'm going to continue trying with other videos, I guess? I've kind of exhausted all my options here. I mean, at least something new happened so obviously I was somehow missing the codec. However, installing it just resulted in the videos crashing my game. If it matters, and I don't know why it would, my computer has a Radeon 7770 graphics card. I mean, I had to basically force the game to recognize it but there have still been some side effects. One of those side effects is that I can't get the game to do certain things, I can't get it to recognize Criquette's better nightlife or the Castaway water mod in neighborhood view. So this could be a side effect of a newer graphics card maybe? That's all I can think of.

Are you putting them in your Documents folder or into the Gamedata Broadcast folders?

Test this one:
http://simfil.es/331875

Okay, so before I was putting the files in C:\Users\User\Documents\EA Games\The Sims 2\Movies\Broadcast\TvChildren or whichever channel. I tried putting the video into the Res\movie\broadcast\Commericals folder but that didn't work either. I got another crash just like before. I got a black screen on the Television this time though.

There is definitely something still wrong with your codecs, it looks like the game cannot figure out how to read the compression. Do you have other codecs installed on your computer? Try installing these:
https://www.xvid.com/download/
http://www.divx.com/en/software/technologies/avi

I did have other Codecs installed, I uninstalled it which did nothing but then I reinstalled it and then I installed Xvid and DivX and...



Oh my gosh, thank you guys so much! I've been trying to get this to work for like three days!

Aww bad luck, now you have Sim Sample on TV!

Well done for fixing it!