- So I've said this before
and I'm gonna say it again here now okay.
Anyone who has cut the cord
needs to have a good over-the-air antenna at home
so you can watch all that sweet free TV.
What, you haven't heard me say that before?
Fine, but it's still true, okay.
In any event, that brings us today's little toy,
the Amazon Fire TV Recast.
So what the heck is this thing and why would you want it?
Let's skip all the chit-chat, go to it right now.
(futuristic music)
Alright, here come the basics.
So this big plastic box
is in fact the Amazon Fire TV Recast.
It's basically a TV tuner or actually several TV tuners
and a hard drive.
So you plug in an antenna, scan for the channels,
hook it up to your network,
and then you're able to watch over-the-air TV.
Now if you think that sounds a lot like HDHomeRun
or Tablo or AirTV, you're right.
And if you're also thinking that $229 or $279
is pretty expensive, you're also right.
Now before we go any further, one big caveat here
and that is the Recast only works with Amazon Fire TV.
That means the dongles, that means the sticks,
that means the Fire TV app on your phone or tablet.
What it does not work with is the Amazon Prime Video app
on Apple TV or Roku or Android TV.
It also doesn't work in a browser
or also on Chromebooks, obviously.
But I tell ya, if you're way into Amazon Fire TV
that is you only do Amazon Fire TV
and you don't deal with Roku or any of that,
it's gonna work pretty well for ya,
even if it isn't all that inexpensive.
So let me walk you through it some more.
So setup is pretty simple here, okay?
First you need an antenna.
I prefer mine outside, it just works better that way.
And then you need to get the cable from the antenna
inside to your Recast somehow.
I'm gonna leave that up to you.
Now this is the part where I tell ya
I initially tried to hook things up with ethernet
running into the Recast
and I had a little bit of a hard time
getting it to talk to my phone
or even my Fire TV out here in the living room.
Once I unplugged that
and I hooked everything up through WiFi separately,
it all worked pretty well.
So your mileage may vary, it just kinda sucks
that that's still a thing in 2018.
Anyway, yeah, plug everything in, scan for channels,
and then you just start watching TV.
It's pretty straightforward
and it's a pretty easy experience on the phone.
All the channels are listed right there
exactly where you would expect them to be.
Now in a Fire TV device though,
it took me a minute to fine 'em.
Oh, there they are down there.
Now you get a preview of what's on
and the guide is all the way to the left,
and it looks pretty good and it's fast
and it's actually really well done.
Now this being Alexa and Amazon and all that,
yes you can also use our voice.
In fact, you can use your voice for all sorts of things,
to tell Alexa to tune to a certain channel
or watch a certain show, start and stop recording,
that sorta thing if that's how you roll.
That said, that's kinda not how I roll.
I hate talking to these things.
I'm just gonna use the remote.
Hey, by the way it's worth taking a spin
through the settings as well.
This is where you're gonna set up
if you want it to record say a minute or two
before a show comes on or if you want it to run long
a minute or two just so you make sure you catch everything.
You can also control how many recordings you wanna keep
on the hard drive and it's all pretty obvious stuff
but it's good to know.
So take a minute and go through that.
Well this all works, and it works pretty well.
But there's gotta be a catch, right?
So yeah, okay, I've got a few nits to pick.
First, remember that there are two versions of the Recast.
So you get two tuners and a 500 gigabyte hard drive for $229
or you can get four tuners and a one terabyte hard drive
for a whopping $279.
But even for all that money
you can only watch simultaneous shows
on two devices at the same time.
It'll be recording up to four things in the background
but you can only watch on two TVs.
For me, that's kind of a nonstarter in my house,
especially when we're entertaining and say football's on.
Now it's always going to record whatever show
you happen to be watching at the time
and that's actually kinda cool
'cause it let's you pause and fast forward
and rewind and stuff like that.
But the limitation is two simultaneous shows
on two devices and that's it.
Now the other thing is that the video you're watching
gets transcoded and actually downgraded
to a lower resolution.
So if you're watching something on the TV in 1080i
it's going to get transcoded down to 720p.
That makes it easier to stream over your network
and that's what things like Tablo do as well.
So it's not out of the ordinary
but it's absolutely noticeable
when you're watching on a big TV.
If you're watching on a phone,
might not be able to tell as much
but it's the sorta thing that just kills me
when I'm out here watching on the big screen.
So, should you buy the Amazon Fire TV Recast?
(quizzical exclamation) maybe.
Okay look, you have to be way in on Amazon Fire TV
to even start this discussion.
If you use Roku or Apple TV or anything else
other than Amazon Fire TV,
stop, go watch another one of my videos.
They're all really good.
Second is that again
you're limited to two simultaneous screens
even if you're recording up to four things at once.
So I can't have the TV on here in the living room,
watching something else out on the porch
and somebody else is watching something in a bedroom
at the same time, it just won't do it.
Two screens, two screens only.
Now that's not to say that Amazon has a bad product here.
Recast is actually really well done
you just have to A, be way in on Amazon Fire TV and B,
be okay with that two screens at the same time sorta thing.
If you need more than that
you're gonna wanna look elsewhere.
Me, I would probably either go for Tablo
if you still need to record things over the air
or if you don't go for HDHomeRun
'cause you can get the quad that has up to four streams
and you can daisy chain 'em and have even more
and watch all the things at the same time.
So that's it.
Amazon Fire TV Recast, for me it's a maybe
and an expensive maybe at that.
If you have anymore questions about the Recast
hit me up Twitter, socials, all that stuff.
Leave 'em down in the comments,
that's always a great place as well.
Be sure to subscribe if you haven't already.
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Got some really cool stuff comin' up.
Thanks again for watchin', see ya later.
(futuristic music)