# Thumbnails Images and HLS

Thumbnail images representing what is currently happening in a live stream are available for populating a player poster frame, a scrollable list of available streams, and the like.

Manifests for HLS fallback of THEOlive streams are available for serving a stream to a device that cannot deploy an OptiView player.

Both thumbnails and HLS manifests are available from a deterministic URL.

## Getting Thumbnail Images

Thumbnails are available as jpeg images with URLs in the following format:

```text
http://discovery.theo.live/channels/<channelId>/stream/thumbnail.jpeg
```

* `channelId` is the identifier of the channel you wish to get the thumbnail for
* There is currently no ability to control the size or compression level of a thumbnail image

An example thumbnail image and URL for a channel:

```text
http://discovery.theo.live/channels/ar5c53uzm3si4h4zgkzrju44h/stream/thumbnail.jpeg
```

![](http://discovery.theo.live/channels/ar5c53uzm3si4h4zgkzrju44h/stream/thumbnail.jpeg)

## Getting HLS Manifests

HLS manifests are available in the following URL format:

```text
http://discovery.theo.live/channels/<channelId>/stream/main.m3u8
```

* `channelId` is the identifier of the channel you wish to get the HLS manifest for

An example HLS manifest URL for a channel:

```text
http://discovery.theo.live/channels/ar5c53uzm3si4h4zgkzrju44h/stream/main.m3u8
```