FireTV Twitch App and Deep Link Support

[therobanddanshow]

Does or will the Twitch App for the Amazon FireTV support Mobile Deep links for opening streams directly from other FireTV apps or, in our case, a FireTV Web App?

use case: I am looking to develop an HTML5 Web App for the FireTV that displays our live status and our audio podcast episodes. I would like to add the ability to load our live stream or even video archives from the WebApp as well, but I get a Security warning, followed by "net::ERR_UNKNOWN_URL_SCHEME (ttv://open?stream=). This happens with twitch:// as well, leading me to believe that the Twitch FireTV app does NOT support deep links.

I am unable to use the HTML5 player embed within the app, since the embed player does not seem to support the FireTV remote control input codes, and since our channel is marked for Mature Audiences, i am unable to use the remote to click through the “Start Watching” button and the Mature warning.

The only other option, which is NOT an option at all, is to use the .m3u8 file, but that is not at all supported and we want to make sure this stays above board.

Having the FireTV Twitch app properly support Mobile Deep Links would be the best route to go, that way ads would still play, as our WebApp would simply move the user/viewer over to the official Twitch app.

[therobanddanshow]

I did some more digging into the Deep Linking to Amazon FireTV apps and while Deep Linking is mentioned, it appears to not be the same as Deep Linking on most mobile platforms, so that option is out.

I guess the only thing I can really do at this point is ask that Twitch implements a way for the HTML5 Video Embed to detect if the platform it is being run on is the FireTV (via the FireTV WebApp platform and the Amazon HTML5 WebApp Tester application) so that it can properly support the FireTV remote and game controllers for navigation, playback and the ability to click thru the Mature Warning confirmation overlay).

Until that can be implemented, the best I will be able to do with my FireTV app development is pull from the Twitch API our channels Live status, the preview image of the stream, stream information, and then have a page in the app that informs the user that they need to open the Twitch App and navigate to our channel manually.