[RELEASE] Stream Link/File Manager for Channels [Streaming Library Manager Extension]

Ok, well I've tested it and Paramount Plus still wont work, I've tried Peacock and Hulu and they do not work either. I seemed to not be able to get anywhere with this. More than likely its probably Android/ GoogleTv 14 . Don't know where to go from here.

Paramount plus= No app for this error
Peacock= Opens, but to main start page and not the tv show. So still have to look for the show.
Hulu= Does nothing, no error, wont open anything.

It is not. I have several Android/GoogleTV 14 devices and Stream Links work on them. It appears, though, you are running into specific apps that are having problems.

As I said, you'll probably have to play around with this one. Based upon what I've seen, Paramount+ doesn't seem to be happy with anything direct, so you might have to deal with just a generic launch. Try a Stream Link Mapping of anything that contains paramountplus and replace with https://www.paramountplus.com and see if that works just for app launching. From there, you can try the subareas, but the problem appears to be on Paramount's side, so you'll have to reach out to them. Tell them they wrote deep linking incorrectly in the Android Manifest.

@miles, @tobycth3, @Jean0987654321 can you comment on this? When last we discussed in February everything was happy, but maybe something changed?

Looks like Disney broke something in the Android Manifest because this was working before. Since the standalone version of this app is going to be discontinued sometime in the next few months, I doubt they'll fix it. In the short term, you could do a generic mapping to at least open the app at https://www.hulu.com/open. My recommendation is do the Hulu to Disney+ mapping because that works in 98% of situations (some content still isn't in Disney+Hulu yet, for reasons that are beyond me, including a couple of Hulu Originals I know about).


In case anyone is interested in my analysis, here's a part of it (from my AI buddy):

Disney+ succeeds because:

βœ… It accepts any path under the domain
βœ… It uses server redirects to normalize links
βœ… It does not require strict pathPrefix matching
βœ… It does not rely on the app to parse the incoming URL directly

Hulu and Paramount+ do the opposite:

❌ They require strict pathPrefix matching
❌ They do not redirect /watch/{id} or /shows/{id} into a normalized format
❌ They rely on the app to parse the incoming URL
❌ They require App Links verification to succeed
❌ If verification fails, Android silently ignores the link

This is why:

    βœ… Disney+ links β€œjust work”
    ❌ Hulu links often do nothing
    ❌ Paramount+ links require rewriting

I know a lot of work went into the rewrite, but it is not nearly as intuiutive as the old version. I want to add a new show show that I've already seen season 1 of. I figured out how to bookmark the show, but can't figure out how I'm supposed to mark season 1 as watched, and generate streamlinks for season 2. I changed all of the Status's to off for the S1 episodes and hit Execute Actions and Continue, but then they revert back to unwatched. Previously I could just turn a whole season on or off. What am I missing? What do I do next to generate the streamlinks for the whole show? Do I need to select the special action for every episode? I've tried deciphering the help page, but it is just not as clear as it used to be.

1 Like

Use Global Controls for doing something over an entire season.

You need to select the appropriate action at the program level, namely Generate Stream Links/Files

You need to select the appropriate action at the detail item level, namely Save. But as highlighted above, if you are doing the same thing across an entire season, through a specific season, or for all episodes, use Global Controls.

Also, pay attention to the messages as they'll tell you exactly what is going on:

No, Special Actions are just for creating Stream Files, making SLM Streams, or overriding Stream Link source priority. As shown above, you need to use Select Action, whether on the Program, Detail, and/or Global Level. A selected action of None will do just that: nothing.

As linked above, examples of almost these exact situations are covered on the Wiki. The documentation has been completely updated with much more information than before. If you have specific feedback for something you'd want added, please provide it.

It'll take a period of adjustment. I have the benefit of having used it in various forms for months and can tell you it's a 1000% faster and easier for me now to do modifications like this. For instance, you can use the Global Controls to mark everything in Season 1 as watched and generate the Stream Links for the rest of the episodes at the exact same time, and it will quickly come back for review and verification.

2 Likes

I hate UI changes and dreaded what would happen when I upgraded SLM yet find the new interface a nice improvement.

The improvement I'd like to see is the site be responsive so I could use it on my phone.

I'm a software developer, so I appreciate all the effort that the developers put in (for no money) making tools for everyone to use to get the most out of Channels.

I'm new to this plugin and had trouble figuring out how to do anything within the "Manage Programs" screen. I'm running an M1 MacBook Air, so it has a high resolution screen, but is running on the macOS default/recommended resolution of 1440x900. I'm also running this on my couch, with no mouse, which makes navigating any screen (in any program or website) more difficult. :slight_smile:

There are so many columns packed into the grids. This is great for extreme power users, but for people that just want to click a button and have it generate a bunch of stream links that show up on their big screen TV, it's difficult to orientate yourself. The "Global Episodes Controls" panel is even worse, with the labels cutoff after just 3 or 4 characters, and the inputs only having enough space for like 2 characters.

I bumped my resolution up to 1650 pixels, which helped a bit, but not much. Gemini says only about 40% of US desktop-class computers report a logical resolution of at least that width.

I understand how software grows in complexity to respond to new use cases. Any discrete feature that is critical to one small group of users often has no value for most other users. It seems like this screen could be built to accommodate new users and extreme power users, while also factoring in how the screen resolution impacts usability.

The entire "Program Details" panel seems like it could be hidden for non-power users. Having it on the screen by default implies it's important something be done at that level. The default layout for non-power users could just be a big button that says "Generate Stream Links", with possibly a couple high-level options that accommodate the most-used customization features (which I'm guessing might be the name, description, preferred streaming vendor, and cover art). If they want more control, offer a toggle to open up all the powerful features that have built into the software for episode-level granularity, bulk updates, etc.

"Global Episode Controls" can't live in what is effectively a right-hand sidebar. It needs more room.

I agree, the screen for managing videos has become way too cluttered and there are too many options on the dropdowns. At the very least, pleace the things that are most commonly done at the top of the dropdown. There are options that I see no reason for yet you do and they could go. Also better than the long line of options would be a numbered list or single dropdown that leads to a wizard where we chose the rest of the options.

This would greatly simplify the interface and also make it work on phones which are much more friendly in the living room than a laptop or tablet.

Anybody getting 500 errors when searching for shows?

Not too sure whats causing that. Just happened today when searching for "Love Through A Prism"

Everything has floating tool tips so you can see them when they are cut off:

image

Exactly, editing is for special use cases, not everyday activity. This last major update was made so you wouldn't have to use the edit area 99% of time, and then just quickly one-time when you do. Stick to the big buttons in Automation to avoid the need to work in that screen if it's an issue for you:

image

These are the problems and the solutions. I can't keep adding buttons every time there is a new feature, and I can't keep giving some buttons prominence over others. It became impossible to maintain. This is the tradeoff. Now I can add, remove, and modify all actions at any time with very minor modifications. I did put them in what I found the most useful order, but if you have suggestions to change the order, it's simple enough to implement. Or I might be able to do something where you control the order so I don't have to worry about upsetting a different group of users. In the long run, I'd like to be more modular and user-controlled, and this is the first step.

SLM is not designed for either of these use cases and cannot be supported at this time. A full-sized screen with a mouse interface are expected. Maybe in the future there are changes or simplified vs. complete interfaces can be added, but not anytime soon.

Not having any Movie/TV Show search issues. There are some hiccups in the video search, I believe related to a change Google rolled out. Fixing that one is is going to be a bigger challenge:

I got another new issue too. I can't even use slm. It suddenly stopped working. I can't connect to the webui. I removed the image and redownloaded it and still the same thing. Also, looks like justwatch is producing 403 errors

It might mean JustWatch has soft banned your IP. It happened to me before during some testing when I tried to make things more efficient and hit them too hard. The only solution I had was releasing my IP address at the router and getting a new one. Once I had another one, everything could connect again.

1 Like

Oof...gonna have to go home later on and do that.

I greatly appreciate all you have done by creating SLM and It's made my family's TV viewing much nicer. It's so nice to have everything in one place. Please take all my comments/suggestions as a desire to help. I used to be a systems engineer and get the challenges you are facing.

Then why is it first?

You are correct, the overcomplicated feature set is complicating support. There is beauty in simplicity.

Modular code is great. User configurable, well watch out for where that goes.

This is unfortunate and I can see it being a major effort to rewrite the interface. Possibly a wrapper app that takes care of the most common tasks could be produced as a phone app.

The "New and Updated" box might be better named "What's new to watch on each service?"

It's not how we find things yet an interesting feature. For me the most important feature is "Search" as It's what I use when I want to add a show. When I get a hit on a show I want to add, there are so many choices? Why would I want anything other than add it? That drop down is busy and confusing.

I'm not a heavy user of as I add a show or movie at most a few times a month and then I may add nothing for a month or so. The lack of use exposes me to the complexity of the interface as the next time I come back to use SLM I don't remember the sequence I used the previous time. I'm reading the long list of options and scratching my head. Add to this that the interface keeps changing. I put the effort in to get my shows in as once I do the payback is huge. My wife who is an ex IT trainer will no use SLM. The inconvenience of going to a computer or even opening her laptop does not match the way somone interacts with at TV and the interface set her off even more.

You have the basics of a killer app that you could sell a huge number of copies of. The story is a lot like how Channels DVR started. Right now SLM is a hobby for you and possibly you want to keep it that way. I'd certainly pay for having all my viewing in one place. I love what you have created and appreciate all the effort and that you share this with us.

Morris

Please check out this Wiki article; it's all explained there:

My philosophy is there, too:

Aren't we all (among many other titles, my preference was always "Solutions Architect")! :stuck_out_tongue_closed_eyes:

I understand work can be done and SLM can be a lot more, but I just don't have the bandwidth. I've got it working for me, who is my most important customer! I was planning to take a few months away from all of this stuff (Channels board included), but the YouTube playback issues pulled me back in temporarily. Once I release a patch for that and a couple of other small backend things, I'll be disapearing for a while again.

I do read your documentation and have watched the videos that apply. I get the level of effort and you have done great things for our community. Enjoy your time off!

Thank you,

Morris

Getting a new IP worked. Hope I don't have to do that again. I guess SLM went haywire and tripped up justwatch's anti-bot detection. Wild but ok

I just added Paramount Plus Premium as a streaming service in SLM. I then added shows and movies that I wish to stream. Stream links were generated. In the Channels DVR app on my Google TV, when I click the watch button I get the following:
You don't have an app that can do this

The Paramount Plus app is installed and works fine. I get this for any of the shows or movies.

Do any of you have a fix for this?

Thank you

Can you post the link it is generating? I don't do software development in these areas, but I think these work by generating URLs that the streaming box "intercepts" to then open up the correct application on the device.

From a quick Google search, the URL prefix/intent for that app is: paramountplus://

I use an Apple TV and am in the middle of re-working my Docker containers, so I don't have this up locally at the moment, but Paramount Plus was working correctly for me a couple of weeks ago.

Try going to Google, then to "AI Mode", and having a conversation with Gemini about this. It will likely understand and solve your issue. Trying to resolve it may require manually manipulating the files that SLM generates, which, if I remember correctly, are just those URLs.

1 Like

Yes the stream files contain a url and this is a sample from one:
https://www.paramountplus.com/shows/star-trek-picard/video/p_F16OmokbFpnKJC64lcdoP9_MdR1I7D/star-trek-picard-remembrance

Googling I found this format:
intent://paramountplus/…

And it doesn't launch the app. I also tried the format you suggested and the app did not launch.

Plex is unable to launch the Paramount Plus app as well.

Thank you for the suggestions,

Morris