Get Started with Live Events

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Prerequisites

• Access to the source code of your app for Fire TV.
• A Fire TV device that supports this integration. Check with your Amazon contact for a list of device types currently supported.

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Integration overview

1. Integrate with the Vega EPG Provider for user event entitlements and metadata, so users can browse and discover your content.
   1. If your app does not provide Linear TV, exclude the ingestChannelLineup and ingestProgramLineup steps from your EpgSyncTask, and ignore channel and program details.
2. Leverage Content Launcher to launch live event playback.
   1. In step 3 of the Content Launcher Integration Guide, The MediaId is passed as part of the contentSearch argument when calling the handleLaunchContent() API. See the following sample code.
      const contentLauncherHandler: IContentLauncherHandler = {
         async handleLaunchContent(
            contentSearch: IContentSearch,
            _autoPlay: boolean,
            _optionalFields: ILaunchContentOptionalFields,
         ): Promise<ILauncherResponse> {
            // Other content launcher logic
      
            const searchParameters = contentSearch.getParameterList();
            if (searchParameters.length > 0) {
               for (let j = 0; j < searchParameters.length; j++) {
                  const externalIdList = searchParameters[j].getExternalIdList();
                  for (let i = 0; i < externalIdList.length; i++) {
                     const catalogName = externalIdList[i].getName();
                     const contentId = externalIdList[i].getValue();
      
                     // "catalogName" is the MediaId.catalogName you provide using Kepler EPG Provider.
                     // "contentId" is the MediaId.contentId you provide using Kepler EPG Provider.
                     // Start Live Event Playback
                  }
               }
            }
      
            // Finalization logic
         },
      };
      

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Integration details

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Content supported

1. Scheduled Live and Future Events - Like a pay-per-view event, or the Olympic Games.
2. Catch-up and Rebroadcasts (VOD) - Available to watch whenever you want.
3. Highlights, Condensed Games, Interviews (Short form VOD) - Similar to #2, but a shorter venue, such as game highlights.
4. Instantaneous Live Events - Live feeds, such as a Twitch feed.

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Content support: Scheduled events

1. Fire TV displays events scheduled to air within 7 days and automatically removes them from the UI after their end time. Consequently, you can push events taking place after these 7 days without worrying that events are displayed too early or won’t be removed on time.
2. Current airing events receive a LIVE badge on the tile to inform the user of the airing status. The LIVE badge is hidden when it’s not airing.
3. A red progress bar appears at the bottom of the event tile to inform the user of the event’s progress.

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Content support: Rebroadcasts

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Content support: Clips

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Content support: instantaneous events

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Event entitlements and ordering

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Content insertion

• Insert a minimum of 5 tiles to completely fill the carousel. Fire TV hides your row if there are fewer than 5 Live Events available. Consider adding rebroadcasts or short form clips to maintain the minimum at all times.
• Supply a displayable event title for the LiveEvent.title field. Fire TV displays up to 25 alphanumeric characters, but doesn’t display the full live event title if the length exceeds this limit. This max limit is applicable for both half-width and full-width character sets. Examples:
  • The Walking Dead Universe (Max length-Pass).
  • Ed’s Purple Plane (Max length-pass).
  • How Sally Fell off her Horse and Learned to Play Piano on a Saturday (Max length-fail, since it’s over 25 characters long).
  • エドのパープルプレイン (Max length-Pass).
• Provide all required metadata for Live Events. Refer to Metadata Attributes for details.
• Provide future-scheduled airing events ahead of time to minimize the frequency of syncs. Fire TV caps at a maximum of 15 tiles per event row, and removes ended events from the carousel within 5 minutes after the end time. Your app should remove expired live event content from the provided list in the next periodic sync.

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Metadata attributes

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Related topics

• Vega Live TV API Overview
• Vega Live TV Issues