Dear twitch,

“gamestreams” is a great app for LG smart tvs (webOS) that allows one to watch twitch streams directly on the tv without the need of using some other casting devices. Unfortunately after the API V3+5 change/shutdown the app suddenly stopped working. I’m sure there are lots of people watching twitch on LG tvs and we’d like to able to do so in the future. After reaching out to the developer of the gamestreams app i got the following answer from Reemet Paabo:

“Yes Twitch.tv is closing down the V3 and V5 API endpoints that we are using and therefor we will have to rewrite the whole Application.
Now, I had started to rewrite the whole application and it was going well, until I hit a brick wall with the Twitch Embed player that I have to use.
It has that Maturity check on it, " Content is rated mature” and you have to press “Start watching” button to continue, unfortunatly there is no way to bypass that and its only clickable, which LG does not allow. You have to be able to use the button with OK key aswell. I’ve tried all kinds of solutions but always end up with cross-origin-policy error ( since the player is “cloning” another website, you can not execute code within it ). For now I’ve given up because there’s no way around cross-origin-policy and sadly twitch developers will not help us eather."

As far as i can tell the developer is willing to adopt to your new API, but is also limited by LG and webOS features. It would be awesome if you could support Reemet in any way or extend your new API so that keyboard events can be used and help to keep the gamestreams app - with that twitch - on LG tv alive.

kind regards,
Michael

P.S: I’m just a sad consumer and not affiliated with gamestreams, LG or twitch in any way

Using the unofficial Twitch apps that existed previously on tvOS, it was extremely easy to navigate stream recordings that are often 5-6 hours long. Since the official Twitch app debuted, all the third-party apps have ceased development, so we're stuck with the bad video controls of the official app. This could be solved by using the standard tvOS video control APIs that almost every other app uses. Examples:

1. While watching a long Overwatch stream, when the streamer was queuing for a match, I could easily tap the right edge of the trackpad to jump forward in small increments, until I could see on screen that a match had started. Then I could tap the left edge of the trackpad once to jump back to the start of the match. Now, I have to navigate to the fast-forward button, hit it multiple times to get to a fast speed, then navigate back to the play button, see if a match has started, and repeat multiple times. Then once I see a match is in progress, I have to repeat the process in reverse. It's a significantly higher number of button presses and time.




2. If I'm watching a stream while doing something else and miss something important, I used to be able to just tap the left edge of the touchpad and I was instantly back x number of seconds to see what I missed. Now I have to navigate to the rewind button, and choose to either wait for a slow rewind speed, or tap a few times for a fast rewind speed and usually overshoot and rewind way more than I meant to.




3. If I want to skip to the second half of the stream, I used to be able to just choose precisely with a swipe and tap where I wanted to play. Now I have to bring up the menu, go to the fast forward icon, and fast forward at 2048x, usually overshooting where I wanted to go and having to rewind.

All in all, the Twitch app's video navigation is like using a VCR in 2020. I don't understand why it was implemented this way when no other app does it this way, and I'm guessing it took more work to create this custom UX than it would've to use the built-in tvOS API.

Watching twitch on the Fire TV (Stick) app is actually possible since the updates last year, but some features are still missing.

I logged into my account and was missing the tab for VODs of my followed channels.
So there is no easy way to find out what streams of your followed channels you may have missed. Even if you know you missed one, you have to go to their page first which especially is a nuisance if you follow alot of channels which you have to scroll through. Using the remote control to search for a channel is even worse, so not an option for me.
(Sidenote: there is no date on the VODs on their channel page)

I also find it kinda strange that there is a tab to "continue watching" (which doesn't include streams you only saw parts of live) easily showing you the VODs you had to search so hard for in the first place, if that makes any sense..

I hope we can get that tab for all the videos of channels we follow, just like the 'Videos' tab in the browser.
Thanks for reading,
Tris

"Guys, you should follow Emma , seriously! She is an amazing music streamer."

When streamer Dan said this, I wanted to be able to do these things in this order:

1) figure out who this "Emma" was that he was talking about (a mod's !so shoutout helped here)

2) easily get to Emma's channel to follow her

3) come right back and continue watching Dan

4) be able to check out Emma in more depth later (this is already easy, once I'm following Emma)

Now, the feature request(s).

SCENARIO A: (less work to implement, but also less intuitive and less beneficial to the viewer than SCENARIO B below.)

On the Twitch for Fire TV app, I can navigate to a list of current viewers (while still watching the channel). This is good. When I scrolled to find Emma's name, I was able to click on it, which was great - I was so close to my goal!

But when the menu options appeared, there were only two:

• Report


• Block

What I wanted:

• Report


• Block


• View Profile

The "View Profile" option would take me to Emma's profile, temporarily leaving Dan's channel.

I would then look at Emma's content, select whether to click the "Follow" button, click it (or not click it), then hit "Back" to return to Dan's channel, where I was immediately previous to coming to Emma's profile.

Expected Steps:

1. Navigate to Dan's channel.


2. Make sure the chat is visible.


3. Press left four times to navigate to the Viewers list button (it says the # of current viewers and has a two-person icon on it).


4. Click that viewers list button. The list of current viewers appears.


5. Scroll to or search for Emma's username and click on it. A menu appears that contains a "View Profile" option (in the same list with the "Report" and "Block" options).


6. Click "View Profile". Emma's profile should appear.


7. Click Follow. A visual cue tells me I'm now following her (I believe the button changes to "Unfollow" - this is not new functionality.)


8. Click Back. I should be taken back to Dan's stream.

Step 8's navigation flow is similar to when a streamer raids another - a message appears asking if I, the viewer, want to visit the raided streamer's channel, which I click, and can then immediately click "Back" to return to the original streamer's channel. This "Back" navigation journey should be preserved in a similar way with this idea.

There are improvements you could make to this process, but I feel like it would take the least development to do it this way (SCENARIO A).

SCENARIO B: (maybe more work to develop, but more intuitive and more beneficial to the user/viewer)

A more streamlined way to get to Emma's profile when viewing Dan's chat feed: press "up-arrow" one or more times (or press & hold it to scroll faster) on the fire tv remote to start navigating back/up through the chat feed (navigating backwards in time). Each time I click up, the next most recent @username is highlighted. When it gets to Emma's username (e.g. @EmmaJonesTheSinger is highlighted), I click on it, and the "View Profile" option appears. Similar to step 6 above, I click on "View Profile", and steps 7-8 play out similarly to SCENARIO A ("Follow", then "Back" to return to Dan's channel).

One clarification: as I ascend the chat list (going back in time), the usernames of the authors of the messages are the ones that are highlighted (and scroll into view), AS WELL AS the names that are @mentioned in the message text bodies. So if @Bob says "@Sally is cool", then @John says "Cool, I'll check her profile out" in that order in chat, then as I am navigating back through the chat, John's name would be highlighted, then Sally's name within Bob's message would be highlighted, then Bob's name would be highlighted - essentially, in the reverse order that they appeared in chat when originally submitted.

Hitting the "Back" button while a name is highlighted will return you to the present (i.e. most recent chat message) in real time, and re-highlight the "Chat about this channel..." button.

I like SCENARIO B's scrolling-back-through-chat method better, in fact, because I get to reread the chat messages even if I don't click on any names. Chat messages often pass by so incredibly quickly that no human mind can process them all in real time. :D

So, SCENARIO B has more benefit and solves more problems.

The only reason I would choose SCENARIO A over B is if it is significantly less work to implement, making it easier on your developers. Most of the structure already exists for SCENARIO A.

(translated from German by DeepL)

Hello, Twitch,

since the release of your new Twitch app for AppleTV I have the following criticisms:

Home page:
- Where can I set "my language" (german) so that under "Channels in my language" I am no longer shown ALL international channels with ALL languages?

Live streams:
- There is no display of how long the current stream has been running (uptime).

Stream recordings ("Earlier broadcasts"):
- The date from when the stream or clip is from is missing - both in the thumbnails and in the enlarged view.
- The rewind and fast forward function is a disaster! It's extremely unwieldy, very inaccurate and totally complicated to use and doesn't take the modern touch interface of the AppleTV remote control into account at all!
- Also missing is a skip function that jumps 10 seconds forward or backward in the video.

Why do you want to "reinvent the wheel" with your new app? Why can't you fall back on well-known and popular functionalities? Even with the recent update of the ARD media library app, the playback of their videos has been changed to the general standard (wiping the touch surface causes the video to be fast-forwarded or rewound, a click causes it to jump 10 seconds back, etc.)

I hope very much that you will revise the app again, because at the moment it's just a big annoyance for me and it's no fun anymore to watch live streams and stream recordings.

Greetings from Germany