For fire tv anyway.
Sucks for those that use them.
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It makes me glad I don't use a Fire TV at all.
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What an incredibly hostile change.
Use a different Android TV device. Chrome Cast with Goggle TV avoids the annoying Amazon restrictions. Even a year ago Amazon blocked a lot of nice Android features and apps. Google blocks a little bit yet it's a nice experience. Generic Android TV boxes are least restrictive.
I never found Channels Stream Links to be useful to me. Seems like you need to go find something you want to watch using the app of a service, then you need to build a file that points to it so that Channels can use it. Why don't I just watch it or flag it while I am using the services app. What is the benefit of having it listed in my Channels library? Seems like extra effort for no benefit.
Now if Channels helped you find video selections from the various services depending on your personal desires and automatically added the links of items you select to your Channels library then you have something. I guess this is what Plex is doing and Amazon is not happy.
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I agree ... If I want to mark something as interesting I just add it to my watch list in Prime. Why go through all the trouble of getting the info creating a streamlink then to watch launch Channels DVR select the streamlink then watch in Prime.
I know Plex Discover is working on a universal watch list that will launch the APP.
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This is just another feature of Channels that makes no sense to some people, and is a killer feature for others.
One great use is for kids content. Even if you have a Disney+ subscription, some people find it nice to add the content in Channels, to make it easier for their kids to find their favorite things.
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I remember TiVo had the feature (maybe still does) where you could search for things using a pass or wishlist and they would appear in your My Shows. If it was available from one of your linked streaming providers you could watch it, otherwise it was marked as currently not available.
I think I used it a couple times many years ago.
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I used this feature religiously on my TiVO. When it worked, it worked beautifully, I would say even better than Channels. But the problem was it had a nearly 30% failure rate due to missing or just plain wrong metadata. It was completely unacceptable and TiVO was zero responsive to doing anything about it.
My #1 need is to have all my and my family's content in one place. It is worth every bit of effort to simplify my life and never, ever have to care or remember where a specific piece of content is. This is the simplification of my life to the Nth degree.
Channels launching Stream Links is THE reason I switched from TiVO. The addition of metadata editor solved almost every other issue I have ever had with unmatched content. I could not be any happier with this solution, except...
I agree with this sentiment and have made similar request in the past (most recently in the "What would you like to see in 2023" thread). Single interface content discovery, selection, and management is the holy grail that will resolve everything for me, especially merging the same content and picking which source you want to play from. Even intergrating JustWatch into the Channels interface (they have an API, hint hint, wink wink) would do wonders.
That said, even without these feature I will vehemently defend the usefulness and joy of Stream Links. My reason for being here and still a top 5 feature of my Channels experience, period.
I also want to point out that this is an incorrect assumption. You can use any content aggregator like JustWatch, ReelGood, Plex, Google TV, Apple TV, etc....
I use JustWatch which show me every single day what has been added to me services. If I'm (or someone in my household is/maybe is) interested in the content, I click the link from there, get the Stream Link, and create the file. I do this once a week, takes me less than an hour, very easy.
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Depends what Interface you use. I use the FireTV interface and their watchlist tells you exactly on where you can watch the content.... so I find no need for Stream Links... That Includes Pluto Plex and my Installed Apps.... Also OTA content... and launches the Apps.
How many Channels customers actually use this "killer feature?"
Eleventy-seven
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eleventy-seven
The value of any unknown integer that can be counted in scores (tens) ie more than 20 but not in hundreds ie below 200.
Ha! I withdraw my question!
Could you point me in the direction for instructions on how you are getting the link from Reelgood or Justwatch. I gave up on stream links after floundering and not finding a helpful tutorial. Would love to use this feature.
I guess I'm a kid as I like to have a single list of things to watch. Checking all over the place is busy work, the kind of thing that computers are good at. It would be super if Channels would check our streaming services for content and mark it as steamtable and then launch the app for us when we want to watch.
I'm not getting the link from them, I am clicking their link to get me to the program on the service. You still need to get the link by launching the actual movie/episode on that service's website. For instance, here's an episode of a show on Hulu:
This is a net new show for me, so first I'll create a folder outside of Channels's directories.
Then I'll create a Season folder under that, as if this were any other imported/personal content.
In this case, there were 25 episodes of the season available and I would need to create a file for each episode. However, I created a template for Seasons 1-10 with 52 episodes each a long time ago, so all I have to do is copy & paste the blank files in:
Or really what I do is copy the whole template directory and just delete everything that I don't need. Just like with any imported/personal content, it can say anything, so long as it has the season and episode number in there in a format that Channels can understand. If we are talking about a movie, you want the Title and Release Year. Just pretend that it is a normal media file, except the extension must be ".strmlnk". In my case here, I want to put in the file that this is the "Dub" version instead of the "Sub", so I use a renamer tool to update the file names:
And there we go:
Anyway, I then open all of the files:
And from there just copy and paste the link from my browser:
Proceed to the next episode and rinse and repeat 25 times. It should be noted that some services have a lot of extraneous garbage in their links that you need to remove. Netflix is particularly bad. Basically, if there is an ampersand, everything after and including that is useless. The guide the Devs put together shows a bunch of examples for what you are looking for:
By the way, you can and I have created macros to do the copying and pasting for me, but sometimes it is just easy enough to do this manually. Anyway, I save and close my files and now have a bunch of 1KB files:
So I cut and paste the entire show directory to the Imports / TV directory (or Movie directory for things like that). I also place them under a sub-directory for the service so it is easy to find in case I get rid of a service or if changes services.
Channels also picks up info from the either the directory or the link and adds the service as a visible tag that you can see.
After a few minutes, Channels will read the imports and create a the appropriate metadata (or not, and you have to go through a match/manual edit process). It is important to note that this scanning is why I created the files outside of Channels's directories. If I had created the files in Channels's directories, it could have scanned them before I created the link, and if it did that, then nothing would work because the blank file would be in Channels's database. I can get around that by refreshing metadata, but that is annoying and super manual and this saves all the effort.
While I was typing that, Channels finished its scan and we got a match. Hooray!
With the match, Channels was able to get all the episode metadata:
If I click on "Watch Now" in the web, it will open a new tab with that episode. If I do it on my streaming device, it will launch the app (assuming I have the app installed and it is set up correctly to accept deep linking).
That would have taken me only a couple of minutes, but I was documenting as I went. The words make this look like much more work than it is!
Would I prefer not to have to do this manually and just select a program and have it automagically appear? Absolutely. But this minor effort is worth every moment for the ease of having everything in one place and not be beholden to Mr. Amazon or anyone else's OS or yet another third-party tool. Channels is my media center. You do you if that makes you happy, but everything you describe I do in Channels alone, plus have a single place for all my personal/imported file-based content. Recordings, files, Stream Links, and Strm files all together so there is no differentiation; OTA, TVE, Pluto/Pluto-like services, and Custom stations all in one single guide and not a care in the world where they originate from--this is what makes me happy and sane.
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Great post, @babsonnexus!
Thanks for all the detailed instructions.
I have not tried stream links yet but thanks to your very detailed step-by-step guide, I am more likely to give it a try now.
Cool stuff!
Really appreciate this.