@GTFan, I'm at the point where I'm trying to do whatever makes it easy for the wife to find all her content and tv shows in one place instead having to navigate through many apps to view OTA, YTTV, ESPN+, VOD, personal recordings, and various apps for each network. I already remapped our YTTV TVE channels to our old Spectrum cable channel numbers and set up a Sofabatton remote so she can access content directly by channel number instead of scrolling through the guides and apps. As the saying goes, "happy wife, happy life"!
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I share the same feeling as you, @GTFan. We never use Channels DVR to watch live TV in my house. Watching live TV is a rarity and, if it does happen, it's by using our normal TV source: DirecTV (satellite).
Having said that, I do understand that many Channels DVR users, especially those who have OTA, may watch live TV, especially sports events. So, for them, I agree that this is a good solution. 
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As mentioned by Fofer
Anyone else following along: obviously install and log into each of these apps ahead of time if you want to try this on your device.
A few questions:
- Do I launch the app on the Client or on the Server laptop, or either way?
- Is this "launch first" for Apple devices only?
- On Firestick and Android TV devices does the "app" automatically launch or must I do as Fofer said, launch the app first? (If auto launch how does the app get credentials?)
Thanks for any answers.
No, perhaps I could have been clearer. Whatever apps your Stream Links are meant to launch, just need to be installed, but only on the clients, for this new feature to work.
I simply mentioned installing and logging in to them ahead of time to make sure that part is working first, since this is a new feature.
The target apps are launched on the client automatically from the guide, for Apple as well as Firestick/Android TV devices. So no, after everything is set up and confirmed working, you don't need to launch any of them first. At least not in my experience.
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Thanks, so by the fact that the "app" is installed on the Client no additional "credentials" are needed.
Thanks for any responses, I'm in rookie learning mode on strmlinks for dummies.
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And I guess the format is: the beginning "text" is the "name" of the app followed by "tve" as follows
Does this name have to match the list from Siri "Ask Siri to watch live channels..." list.
Ask Siri to watch live channels on your Apple TV
NBC = nbctve://live/ then the name of the channel
SPECTRUM = spectrumtve://live/ then the name of the channel..... or spectrumtvtve no spaces
Does the "name of the channel" simply need to match with channel-id="xxxxxxx"
Is the tvc-guide-stationid= the actual hard link to the correct station.
Any way to not have the NBC guide open when switching over to the NBC app. I always get the guide covering half the picture.
Also is there a way to have this generically launch the YouTubeTV app, even if it can't select a specific channel. At least if the app launches it will go to the last channel selected, which probably is the one I want.
This all makes sense now, I thought this was for the Peacock app, not NBC app. How do I make is use Peacock instead?
We could if we can figure out what the scheme url to launch the tvOS app is. Nothing I've tried has worked yet though. It's also possible that the tvOS version just doesn't support it. It's not like a generic feature built into iOS and tvOS. The app developer has to add support for it in the app. It exists in the iOS version. But it either does't exist in the tvOS or it's different and we haven't figured it out yet.
Of note, unfortunately, however, is that YouTube TV does not appear on this list:
Then again neither does Bravo or USA, and they work (just as well as MSNBC and CNBC do.)
But YTTV has a different code base, and it's developed by Google, and they don't always code in the most Apple-friendly of ways. So I'm just not terribly optimistic about it, based on what we know so far. I'd love to be pleasantly surprised though, maybe there is a way to make it just... launch the app?
How are you going to DVR the NBC channels, now that they are protected?
For instance, Iām recording Monday Night RAW in OBS with an Elgato CamLink 4K capture device. But it has to be manually triggered.
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Im using YTTV to record NBC shows
U-verse dvr
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Does this require a beta client for Apple TV?
nflctv:// on tvos
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- fubo is fubotv://
- espn is sportscenter://
- sling is slingtv://
- hulu is hulu://
- peacock is peacock://
- amc is AMCTVOSAPP://
- cbssports is cbssportsapp://
- spectrum is spectrumTV://
- bally is ballysports://
- dtvstream is dfw://
- nhl is nhl://
- philo is philotv://
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FRANCE 24 English News
Hey look: I did a thing and it worked!
#EXTINF:-1 channel-id="FRANCE24" tvg-chno="12999" tvc-guide-stationid="13645",FRANCE 24 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h3MuIUNCCzI
Seems like you could easily do this for any streaming YouTube channel.
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That's cool. However I would like to also suggest you check out The Kister Method because that allows for such YouTube livestreams to play natively in Channels, no need to switch out to the YouTube app. Here's the URL you'd use instead:
https://kister.net/mpl/yt2m3u8?v=h3MuIUNCCzI
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This works thank you.
How do we handle the case where the streamlink call is different on ios vs tvos, but we want to use it on all our devices?
I tried adding both at the same time, but with different channel numbers, but the server only seems to allow one at a time.
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edit: found answer here
use unique channel-id
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But it is very nice to be able to use this on the apple tv.
One note for others following.
The NFL app on apple tv is also finicky like the NBC app and may need to be restarted or closed in the app switcher in order for the nfl network and nfl live channels to show up.