We are developing a new feature which allows the use of Stream Links directly from the guide.
You can create a new Custom Channel of type STRMLNK, which will populate your Guide in the Channels app with EPG. When you click on the current EPG entry and select Watch, the stream link will be followed to open the external app where that live stream is available.
I'm not sure how long it'll last, but I'm still getting the east coast feed of SyFy via TVE. In the meantime I found the tvc-guide-stationid for the west coast feed is 65626, in case anyone else wants to add it back to the guide this way.
While they work on iOS, unfortunately using normal urls doesn't work on tvOS. Which I assume is because tvOS doesn't actually have a browser. Nothing happens when I try to play the channel. Scheme urls with nbctve:// work though.
I tried launching live channels in YouTube TV by using urls like youtubetv://GIBoX-XF5i0 for CNBC for example, which again also works great on iOS but not at all on tvOS. Maybe the tvOS version of YouTube TV doesn't support scheme urls like the iOS version does?
Also on tvOS launching the NBC app through Channels is kind of finicky. It works fine if the NBC app has been completely closed first or isn't still on the live screen when you leave it. However, if you leave the live stream screen up when you leave the NBC app and then try to launch it again through Channels, the live screen in the NBC app will be broken. There's only audio, no guide, and it's playing the channel you last played. It's easy to work around this by just either completely closing the NBC app with double click the tv button+swipe up or by navigating away from the live screen before you leave the NBC app. I imagine this is most likely an issue with the NBC app itself.
this is a great feature and i know its in its infancy but this should be fully developed in the GUI to be marketed as a differentiator between other similar software just like streamlinks are. just my two cents.
Without being able to get ahold of the tvOS ipa file it's all just a guess. You can get the iOS ipa by using Apple Configurator and examine the contents. That's how I found that it supported the url schemes youtubetv and vnd.youtube.tv which both work on iOS. It's possible that the tvOS version is a separate app or just doesn't support the same (or maybe any) url schemes. Given that it doesn't integrate with the TV app it wouldn't surprise me if they didn't bother to support them on tvOS.
Similarly I would love to see a small visual notation on these channels in the guide, because after the first launch, I’m not seeing an alert confirmation anymore, selecting a live show just immediately launches the NBC app. It’s a bit jarring if you’re not expecting it as you’re jumping around from live show to live show. So it would great to see a visual indicator separating these types of channels from ones that play directly and normally within Channels DVR.
After updating the Beta app on my server, my iPhone, and my FireTV, I am now able to go directly from Channels to the NBC Streaming App. It's a little clunky on their end with the buffering, but this is about as seamless as I could expect.
Sadly, it doesn't enable live recording or any other DVR functions (like pause and rewind), which seem almost out-of-reach for these channels at the moment.
Well I got hulu to open up. I don't know if there is a better way than what I did below. I went to the website and got the address from it and put this in. You still have to click on the profile when it first launches. Let me know if this is just the wrong way to do this.
