Amazon Fire TV Feed

How Fire TV channels work

Distributing to Amazon Fire TV requires an existing Amazon developer account and an approved Fire TV channel. Publishers provide an MRSS feed URL through the Amazon Appstore developer portal; Amazon ingests the feed and builds a browsable channel from it. The channel updates automatically whenever you publish new content in VideoNest — no re-submission required after initial setup.

VideoNest generates a Fire TV-compatible MRSS feed that satisfies Amazon's schema requirements, including content ratings, language codes, caption formats, and series/episode structure for episodic content.

Step 1: Create a Fire TV feed

Fire TV feeds are Video feeds. Go to:

Media → Feeds → Create Feed → Video → Amazon Fire TV

You are then presented with two modes:

• Automated: VideoNest generates the feed from your full published library with all required Fire TV fields populated automatically. Your feed URL is ready immediately after saving.
• Custom: Manually assign individual videos to this feed. No filters are available in Custom mode — you select each video one by one from your library. Use this when you want precise control over exactly which videos appear on your Fire TV channel.

In Custom mode, go to Media → Feeds → [Your Fire TV Feed] → Videos to add each video individually. Videos you add must still meet all Fire TV metadata requirements below.

Step 2: Complete required metadata

Fire TV has specific metadata requirements that VideoNest populates automatically from your library. These fields must be complete on every video included in your feed:

Field	Required	Notes
Title	Yes	Displayed in the Fire TV channel browser
Description	Yes	Shown in video detail view; supports up to several hundred characters
Thumbnail	Yes	16:9 aspect ratio; minimum 1280×720; used as the channel tile image on Fire TV
Video URL	Yes	Direct MP4 or HLS stream URL; must be publicly accessible
Duration	Yes	Automatically derived from your video file
Content rating	Yes	MPAA or TV Parental Guidelines rating (e.g., TV-G, TV-PG, TV-14, TV-MA, G, PG, PG-13, R); required for all content
Language	Yes	ISO 639-1 language code (e.g., en for English); set in video metadata or as a feed-level default
Publication date	Yes	ISO 8601 format; used for sorting and display in the channel
Categories	Recommended	Used for Fire TV search and discovery across the platform
Keywords	Recommended	Improves discoverability in Fire TV's content catalog

Closed captions

Fire TV's primary closed caption format is TTML (Timed Text Markup Language). If you have captions uploaded in VideoNest, they are included in your Fire TV feed automatically in TTML format. VideoNest also stores WebVTT captions for other platforms and converts them for Fire TV delivery.

To add captions to a video: go to Media → Library → [Video] → Captions and upload your caption file. Captions are included in all compatible feeds from that point forward.

Series and episode content

For episodic or series-structured content, VideoNest outputs the required series metadata fields that Fire TV uses to group content into seasons and episodes within your channel. Set these fields on each video in Media → Library → [Video] → Metadata:

Field	Notes
Series title	The name of the show or series; used to group episodes in the Fire TV channel
Season number	Integer; used to organize seasons within a series
Episode number	Integer; used for episode ordering within a season
Episode title	Optional but recommended; displayed in video detail view
Episode description	Episode-specific description, separate from the series description

Metadata Enhancement

The Metadata Enhancement toggle is available on any Video feed in VideoNest. When enabled, VideoNest uses AI to improve the associated fields in your feed automatically. You can enable each field independently:

• Title — AI rewrites or improves the title for the platform
• Description — AI enhances the description for clarity and length
• Tags — AI adds relevant tags based on video content
• Categories — AI assigns appropriate content categories
• Thumbnails — AI processes thumbnails; specifically for Amazon Fire TV, it can remove embedded text from thumbnail images. Amazon Fire TV rejects thumbnails that contain overlaid text (channel logos, titles, lower-thirds burned into the image) — enabling this option removes that text automatically to meet Amazon's requirements.

To enable: go to Media → Feeds → [Your Fire TV Feed] and toggle on Metadata Enhancement. Enable individual fields as needed.

Step 3: Get your feed URL

After saving the feed, your feed URL appears on the feed detail page in Media → Feeds. This is the URL you will enter in the Amazon Appstore submission process. The URL is permanent — you only need to submit it once.

Step 4: Submit to Amazon

Submit your Fire TV channel through the Amazon Appstore developer portal at developer.amazon.com. During submission you will enter your VideoNest feed URL as the content source. Amazon reviews all channel submissions before publishing — review timelines vary.