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.
