Fire TV Recast, over-the-air DVR, 1 TB, 150 hours, DVR for cord cutters

I pre ordered this a couple weeks before the release and it arrived the day of the release. Points there for reliable shipment, for the option to make payments, and for crediting early buyers when they put it on sale. Having read through the other reviews allow me to clarify a few things that other reviewers are having issues with. First off this is really a top notch product that works well right out of the box. In sure there is a built in preamp for the tuners and it's obviously of extremely high quality. I'm picking up all of the channels that my old hdhomerun could get plus wpxi out of Pittsburg, which is over 70 miles away. Mote importantly to me, many of the channels I am getting are just plain more reliable with this box than any other setup that I've tried. Streaming is extremely reliable and I've had zero buffering even when both kids are home and making heavy use of the network. Let's talk interface for a minute. One reviewer mentioned that adding a channel to favorites did nothing except add a star next to it. This is not true. Any channels that you have favorited show up in their own section at the top of the channel guide. I'm currently using this to filter things out a bit as I have multiple options for CBS, NBC, ABC etc and added the one with the most reliable signal for each network to my favorites. A couple other reviewers said that when you set a timer to record a series it will record all of the old episodes and doesn't have an option to record only the new episodes. This is also not exactly true, although the interface could use a little work here. When you select a show to record it will pop up a dialog asking if you want to record this episode or the entire series. It's true that it will by default record all episodes including any old ones in syndication. However, if you click the hamburger button again it pulls up the recording options screen where you can set it to record only new episodes, along with other options such a setting a buffer time before and after the recording in case the program begins early or ends late. This screen can also be found in the dvr tan under recording options. What I would like to see, however, is a way to set the options I mentioned above globally. If that functionality is there I haven't found it yet. Instead I have had to go in and set options for every series I set to record, which is a little annoying. Many people have mentioned that they are disappointed that playback is limited to 720p. I'm a little bit disappointed on this point as well, especially since there it's literally nothing in the product description mentioning this limitation. I considered taking off a star just for this. However, I'm convinced that this was a conscious design choiceby Amazon. They advertise that this box has the most reliable streaming over Wi-Fi of any OTA dvr and I'm convinced that this claim is entirely valid. My old setup used an hdhomerun tuner connected in the attic via a powerline adaptor, mythtv on my computer and kodi as a front-end. It was notoriously unreliable and not very easy to use by my girlfriend or the kids. 1080p channels would quickly saturate the network and as soon as a second recording tried to start it would fail. Playback of recordings involved buffering from time to time as well. In comparison this box has been 100% reliable in both recording and playback so far. So I understand the design choices Amazon made and tend to agree with them. Also, the picture quality is really very, very good and if I hadn't read about the resolution limit I wouldn't have known to look for it. Continuing with the interface now. This is really very well integrated with the fire tv interface. I like that there isn't a separate apo to open. I have Pluto TV and a few of those channels now show up with my OTA channels now, too (pretty much all of the news channels). I would love it if the rest would be available here as well. My understanding is that PS Vue integrates here as well which I'm sure it's nice forthose using that service. Myself, I'm using Philo and still have to open the Philo app to access my cable channels. I'm hoping that they will get on the bandwagon here. I actually switched from Android TV to the fire sticks because of Philo, and was hesitant to do so because Android's live channels app was at that time something that I loved but that Amazon had no answer for. Well, if they can get a few more of the streaming services to integrate here it will be what the Live Channels app on Android TV promised but never delivered. So to make a long story short, while the recast is perfectly functional right out of the box I have a lot of hope that the changes Amazon made to accommodate it can open up an even more seamless experience in the future. I think that a lot of the other reviewers were being unfair to this box. It's actually quite excellent and I've never seen a better rollout of a completely new electronics platform. The negatives that several people mentioned are in some cases things they could have solved by clicking around with their remote for a few seconds more. Amazon could polish the interface a little more, and I'm sure they will, but it's already usable now if you spend a minute to figure things out. In short I highly recommend the Recast. It solved all of the problems I had with ota tv in our house. Edit: a recent update added some functionality that I had been missing. When you choose to record a series it now asks if you want to record on that specific channel or on any available channel. This is important and I wish that it had been integrated right from the beginning. To illustrate the importance of this feature, my attic mounted antenna picks up three different NBC affiliates. The strongest one is out of Youngstown, while I also pick up a weaker signal from Cleveland (the antenna is pointed at Youngstown) and a third, very unreliable channel out of Steubenville. I've had plump out a very small number of recordings ever fail, but when they did it was because the box tried to record one odd the weaker stations. This new setting prevents that happening. My only wish now is that the new setting would integrate with the recording options menu. As of right now it is only available in a pop up right after you select a series to record. As such I went in and deleted all of my scheduled recordings and then re-entered them to make sure that the box knows my preference for which station to use, which was a fairly tedious process.

First: I am always impressed with Amazon's product packaging. They make the most beautiful boxes. This product shipped via UPS and was delivered when promised and in good condition. Second, setup: in my case probably most especially, it was too easy. I had a brief dalliance with a simple.tv OTR recording device that did not end well, so I already had a power outlet and antennas (two, with a coupler) in place; installing this device was a simple swap out of the base unit and power supply. I had planned to do a wired ethernet connection from this unit to my router in hopes that it might head off any potential performance obstacles but realized that I had no ports open, so wireless it would be Third, soft setup: I installed the Fire TV app on my Fire Tablet and practically followed my nose. Just a touch of silliness, but no show-stopping surprises. Actually, there was a rather nice surprise: I found all of my local major network channels (and I'll count PBS as one for purposes of this review) and a number of other channels that I had no idea would be available over-the-air, for a total of 30. I never saw most of those channels with the simple.tv unit. Fourth, live tv: I'll be honest, I very seldom watch live tv. On mornings when it snows to check traffic and road conditions, honestly, that pretty much all. But I checked the local major network channels and was again happily surprised by the quality of the visual streams I was seeing. To be clear, if the review were to end here, it would be six out of five stars. Fifth: recording a show. I went all through my Fire TV app to find how to schedule a recording. No dice. You cannot schedule a recording with the Fire TV app. Dear Amazon, this is a gaping oversight and seriously needs to be a priority. I do not schedule tv shows in a vacuum; with my existing cable dvr, when I am scheduling shows, it is invariably while I am also watching tv shows. To be forced to do one *or* the other at a time is a not-minor ding. This was however easy enough to look up and Amazon's Recast TV Q&A page is quite inclusive. First, I used the tv listings on my Fire TV to schedule a 5 pm local newscast. (It was 4:45 at the time.) Then I resumed watching a show on the CBS All-Access app on my Fire TV. As an aside, it should be perfectly obvious at this point that I live comfortably in an all-Amazon universe. (I do have and happily use many Apple devices including the MacBook Pro that I am using to write this review and an Apple TV, and I do have and use a Roku. I like them all a lot but prefer Amazon and the Fire TV world for entertainment purposes.) I'm comfortable with that. The hits always outweigh the misses. (Glad I never bought the Fire Phone.) So I went into this purchase with high hopes and I am grading this product on that scale. I also asked Alexa (my living room Echo Show) to record "Live with Kelly and Ryan." That just worked. (I had already changed the default settings for the Recast to record only new shows, and that was a little-bit klunky...) I was able to view my new, upcoming recordings and series on my Fire TV (again though, not while I was watching something else...). Sixth, playback: The quality of the stream was good. The sound was not pumping through all of my speakers, but I cannot yet confirm that that was because of the Recast or because it was the evening news; I'm inclined to think the latter. I'll update as this becomes more clear. That said, the vanilla stereo I got was very good for, again, the evening news. Navigating was the next test, and there again was a bit of a letdown. The fast-forward button on the Amazon Fire TV remote while playing back a recorded Recast video skips ahead 30 seconds. This will take some practice on my part to get used to. I prefer how my cable-company-supplied dvr works: I click fast forward and I see the stream zoom forward really fast until I see my show come back from commercials and click play... Dear Amazon again, if you can make *that* happen, you can kill cable tv. Just sayin'. If you can do *that*, you can own the world. I know you'll catch up on the resolutions and sound mixers and stuff, but if you can do *this thing*, you win. Forever and ever. I know this is a big, fat ask... I know what makes this difficult, but this is the holy grail... Final First Impression Score: Four Stars. So far, I'm pleased. Quite pleased. Happy, even. Am I delighted and subscribing to a sling-or-fubo-like internet tv service and phoning my cable company to strip my service with them down to Internet-only? Not quite there yet... But so close, but not... ***Update*** The playback scenario has much improved. On the advice of a commenter, I found that holding the fast-forward button shows the playback progressing forward in a smallish window along the progress bar at the bottom of the screen. As I mentioned, it's smallish, so I'm not overjoyed, but I am certainly more comfortable navigating through commercials this way. It's a little early to call on the whole sound system thing based upon what I've been watching so far, but the sound is good enough that I feel comfortable moving more of my scheduled recordings from the cable dvr to the Recast. I'll update further when I watch a recording of something with a little more audio heft... PS, Dear Amazon, the whole setting-up recordings thing is still an important issue... ***Next Update*** Okay, I am now comfortable with the sound. It turns out that HD broadcasts have the whole multi-channel audio thing figured out and it works. That the plus. Now the minus. I was listening to NPR this morning and they were touting a documentary that is scheduled to air tomorrow night on a local PBS channel that I am very interested in watching. (To anyone who might have read that sentence and found me particularly... something... I understand. And I do apologize.) For the record, it is a documentary about the southern city that I willingly chose as a home and how it has grown over many decades, truly heartstring stuff. I set out to record this show on my Recast and ran into a few really annoying things. Things that pile on to the already annoying things about setting up Recast recordings. Okay, I already knew the title of the show I wished to find. Only, there's a problem, there is no search-for-program option. Clearly, there never has been. So I scan my channels and scroll to the time-slot that I know the program is scheduled to air. I scroll down through all of my local channels looking for the show. Repeatedly. Nothing. I accept the possibility that I might not have that (very local) channel available. I rescan for channels. I find I have two more channels than I did before. Lather, rinse, repeat, I still can't find that show. I look closer at what I'm seeing. The channels that I can identify as local PBS channels are only by the *incredibly tiny* icons on the channel listings. No call letters, just itty-bitty, puny icons. Looking at other channels, I see the same thing. And the broader texts on the screen showing me show information offer no clues as to their source, e.g., the actual channel name or call letters. Dear Amazon once more, you have a device that can topple the cable companies on your hands, but glaring flaws stand in your way. You *have* to improve your recording setup routines and a few user-experience gaffs. I don't want to guess what channel I am looking at by microscopic icons. Show me, with crystal clarity, that I am looking at WTVI (for example). (Yes, for me, that local channel with that show, in this case.) And you *must* allow for *many* recording setup options in your FireTV app. Period. I heard about this impending show during my commute to work in the morning. What a treat it would have been if I could have logged in to my Amazon account and set up that recording straightaway, by searching for the program name, right there in my browser. Or on my fire tablet. Or, practically anything other than being forced to wait until I got home, forced to use my FireTV exclusively and even then failing miserably to accomplish my wishes. PS, I was able to search for the program, by name, on my cable box and schedule it to record. *That* process was a bit painful, but it was utterly successful. ***Yet Another Update*** Trust has been established. This is the one that makes me dearly wish there was a possible half-star rating increment. I canceled the scheduled recordings of several of my cable dvr programs that I can now record over the air with the recast. I have viewed enough recordings on the recast to know that it is at least as reliable as my cable box. I am happy with that. Again, this would be a four-and-a-half star review if that were possible. The final half star comes with my usual, repeated gripe. This device has been out for a while now. I'm certain that there are many talented programmers employed by Amazon who are responsible for creating and maintaining it's various software. The gaping hole remains: Users need alternative methods, aside from the recast itself, to schedule programming. I don't care what form that would take -- the Alexa app, the Fire TV app, a specialized website, smoke signals, whatever -- I just know that this product needs this. Scheduling program recordings for the Recast is still its last and most glaring weakness. I can tolerate the puny scrolling fast-forward preview screenlet. But if I want to record a show or series, I want to be able to do that at any time from anywhere and this is non-negotiable. I promise, Dear Amazon, this is what you are missing and this is what will allow you to take over the OTA HD DVR recording world. That redundant rant aside, I do still love this product. If you have read this far, first, I'm sorry, and second, if you understand and can live with the desperately missing functionality that I have been screaming about, buy this.

This device is a perfect companion product if you use a Fire TV Edition, Fire TV sticks, or other Amazon Fire TV family products. I just installed the 4 tuner/1TB version. We have 2 Fire TV Editions, and Fire Sticks on 3 other Smart TVs (not Fire TV Editions). Months ago we dumped our cable and went to over the air reception for ABC, CBS, FOX, NBC, PBS, and a few other OTA channels. We use DirectTV NOW for streaming other programming including HBO and SHOWTIME, and also stream NETFLIX and Amazon PRIME Video services. DirectTV NOW has a free DVR web feature for recording any streaming programming, but they don't offer ABC, CBS, FOX, NBC, or PBS programming in our area (even though it was initially listed as being included). Thus, we had no way to time shift/record any network programs. The Fire TV Recast perfectly addressed this need without a monthly subscription. It was exceedingly easy to install and setup. I just installed a splitter at one of our TVs and ran an antenna lead into the Recast. We have an outdoor antenna setup that is now giving us excellent free HD/4K OTA TV reception. I also had an Ethernet Router at that location and just plugged the Recast into our home network directly via Ethernet (it could also connect to the home WiFi there as well). I added it as a device to the Fire TV app on my phone and that took care of setting it up. A "DVR" menu now appears on the Fire TV HOME screen on each of the Fire Edition TVs, and on the other TVs, when the Fire TV stick input is selected, as well as on the phone's app screen. From any device, you can command a channel scan, and enable or disable any channels, and select FAVORITES. When you go to the ON NOW menu, it gives you two lists of channels, those coming directly from your antenna, and another list of those on the Recast. Thus, you could enable more or less channels from either source as you wish (we had 35 channels available over the air, but many were not of interest). The Recast and the Antenna Channel guides allow you to pick what shows to record individually, or as an entire series (more on this later). You can also select language or closed caption options. You can control the Recast from ANY of your Amazon remotes (Fire TV or Firestick), and also with your voice through the remote or via a connected Echo device. But, you'll need to learn and practice how to do specific repeated tasks with your voice. All good so far.... I've only used it a few days now, but it does record as expected, but I know there are some limitations on how to do 4 shows at once, but haven't checked that out yet. While I haven't used this feature yet, it is also a nice addition, and that it the ability to remotely watch live or recorded OTA content on a compatible phone or tablet via the Fire TV app anywhere you have an internet connection. You can also use your mobile device to remotely control setting up recordings. All excellent features. Now for the improvements. First, the tuner output from the Recast is only 720p. Its very good, but not as good as 1080p or 4K. For some images it is very acceptable, but for others you do notice the resolution difference from HD or 4K. But, its very watchable and better than missing the show! I would definitely be interested in a 1080p or better yet a 4K upgrade at some point, and encourage Amazon to offer it. Its operational menus are not intuitive, clear, and hard to find. For example, deleting a recording, or a series of recordings takes multiple menu steps (at least 3). Its best to use the Option key with the 3 lines on it to find the DELETE menu which isn't on the top level menu (it should be). Also, I found I accidentally recorded one program with Spanish audio by accident, and another with no audio. Care must be taken when setting up a recording. You can vary the start/stop times manually once you find that menu (good for sporting events that might run long). I also seem to have problems finding all the recordings I've made. You can get to recordings via various menu choices, but when I select Scheduled Recordings, it doesn't always show what's already recorded, and what's upcoming. A series recording shows a line of screen shot icons, but doesn't indicate which icon is a specific episode or date? A red dot is added to the show description on the GUIDE to indicate it is selected to record. Improvements to the operational GUI (Graphic User Interface) are certainly needed. Overall, its a great value product for what it does at a very reasonable price. I like that no subscription is necessary. I like how easy it setup and how compatible it is with other Amazon Fire Family products. I like the ability to setup and watch live or recorded TV remotely. I just wish it had higher resolution recording and output, and better menu's. And, if you're a Fire TV user with Over The Air channels, you NEED this!

Since most of my OTA viewing is on the sub channels that mostly broadcast in 4:3 aspect ratio. I am very disappointed that the Fire TV line does not allow for the native aspect ratio to come through. This is not an insignificant issue to a lover of the old TV shows. It causes the video to stretch to fit the screen and distort the image. This is the only product line like this I have ever heard of that does not let you get the native aspect ratio. I have many shows that I am going to have to continue to record and watch on the tuners of my PC instead of the new FireTV Recast and Fire sticks I just purchased. The main purpose of the purchases was to save the PC from over work to just record TV. I never even thought to check on this issue before purchase since only an uneducated designer would even think to hamper a system in this matter. It makes me rethink all of the other Amazon Echo products I have on hand. Some of them still in the return window. I am going to give it two weeks in the hopes that somewhere I can find a solution, if not I will have to return it all. Update-12/17/2020-01- Changed from two stars to one. Well I should have returned it but since it has spent this much time connected to my home I would just prefer to toss it in the trash after taking it apart to destroy any thing that holds memory. I had learned to live with the aspect ratio issue (for those that don't know: Aspect ratio is basically the shape of the screen 4:3 is the old original almost square style 16:9 is the newer HD rectangle style. Sub-channels are the ones that go along with the regular one. Like main channel is 5.1 then you have 5.2, 5.3, 5.4) As an aside my tuners in the computer will record all four of those and consider it one tuner, then it would do the same for up to three other channels. I had tested them and was able to record 17 programs at once with just the four tuners. But I just didn't like leaving the PC run 24/7. Anyway the Recast is performing well as far as signal and reliability of recordings. However the software has even more issues than I originally realized. I recently noticed that if you already have a show set to record all episodes on a particular station New and/or Reruns or even just have it set to record all new shows on any channel you cannot individually record a rerun unless you are watching it at the time. Say you are watching an episode of Chicago PD from two seasons ago on any channel and you remember you had seen part of this and wanted to record it and you know it is a two part episode, you can use the options to record this one but you cannot record the next one unless you cancel the recording of the whole series or sit and wait for the next episode to come on and record it, then go off and do what ever it was you wanted to do. This is just another ridiculous software issue. Really who in the world do they have working on this stuff? There are other little issues not worth mentioning but this really shows of a lack of understanding of how real people watch television and how they use recording devices. Update-12-18-2020: Wish I could go to ZERO stars. Latest software update to Fire Stick Software changes the controls for Live TV which was a big mistake. With all the changes it is a whole new learning curve to control Live TV. They changed the FireTV software without regard to the Live TV watchers. The live TV viewing experience has been mad just a little more difficult by them taking away the ability to quickly switch between the last two stations you were watching. Instead of being able to toggle between live broadcasts by just a single downward and then to the right or left with the select button on the remote, you now have to scroll thru all the channels or bring up the guide and scroll to the station you want. Which could take awhile when you have 60 channels to scroll through. Just how clueless do they want to appear to be? I can now for certain say to cord cutters everywhere that still want DVR control over live tv to look elsewhere for their whole line of equipment. Not sure where yet but it may be a hybrid system of another product line from another major stream playing company with DVR hardware from maybe channel master or tablo or tivo I am just not sure yet. I may be better off just getting the smallest cheapest PC I can find and using that with the tuners I have. Something that doesn't matter if it needs to be replaced. Update 12/18/2020-02- There is so much wrong now that I have to keep coming back to add more as I get the time. Before the update you were able to know how far you are into a show with just a touch of the outer sect ring. Now the only way to know is to fast forward or rewind and check out the numbers in the little fast forward window but if you don't need to fast forward then you have to wait for the next commercial. Also the main page headings used to have a separate section for the DVR. Now the Live Programs have their own Menu spot and the recordings are under the Library. Problem is the old setup let you move easily to the next program if you had to delete more than one. Now when you delete one show you need to wait for the whole page to refresh and move around on the Library page to force it to reset to show your list of recordings again. Since the Library also contains anything you may have purchased from amazon and the Watchlist from other shows you may have been streaming. Also you can tell they did not really put much thought into the whole thing since the menus for everything they changed has a plain Black and White color scheme and the old untouched menu areas still have the yellow highlighted spots so it is easier to tell what's going on in the older areas. I have to stop for now but believe me there is more.

(FYI, my review is for the 1TB model with 4 tuners. For some reason the Amazon Review system shows a verified purchase for the 500GB 2-tuner model but I have never purchased that model.) I've been a cord-cutter for over a decade. I've gone from duct-taped manual setups requiring a full-blown HTPC to Windows Media Center + Xboxes to TiVo OTAs & TiVo Minis and everywhere in between. In my experience, there tend to be 3 tiers of systems: Tier 1: You could confuse it with a traditional Cable set-top box. Hand 90% of people a remote & they'll figure it out within a minute. TiVo falls into this category. Tier 2: The TV functionality is hidden behind an app. Give 90% of people a 5-minute training session & they can figure it out with another 5 minutes of effort. Most commercial options (Plex-based systems, Tablo, etc.) fall into this category. Tier 3: Hacker Joe's custom setup that probably requires special knowledge of what application to run. I started in Tier 3, have spent a lot of time in Tier 2 but now that I'm married, have children (which means babysitters and family visiting), it's important to me to have a Tier 1 whole-house DVR setup. That's why we've had TiVo for so long. However, our current TiVo setup (Roamio OTA + 3x Minis) has started to become increasingly buggy requiring almost daily power cycles of multiple units. So we've been looking to replace it, hence this Recast purchase. Our setup is the 1TB Recast with 2x Cubes, 3x 4k Sticks, and various Android devices. I would say that the Recast and Fire TV clients firmly attempt to be Tier 1 devices. They are probably one of the worst Tier 1 options (not that there are many) that I have seen, in large part because the OTA functionality is mostly being included as an afterthought in the UX rather than as a main focus. Here are a couple examples of what I mean by this: 1. Where is the "Guide" button on the remote? Record? Info? Yep, these don't exist. I get that Amazon is trying to keep the remote minimal and universal, but a couple of these omissions are unforgivable. EVERY Tier 1 device should have a button that effectively means "Let's start watching live TV" and this is almost universally accomplished with a "Guide" button of some sort. Amazon really should release an updated remote specifically targeting Recast users to include 2. Only 2 clients can watch TV at a time? That's a joke! Or it should be. But nope, it's just a sad limitation for a multi-hundred-dollar device that's meant to serve TV to a whole home but can only serve TV to 2 screens at a time. This is actually pretty pathetic. Almost all competition can double this limit. The average TV user is not going to understand what's going on here - it needs to "just work". I mean, you can't host a Super Bowl party with Recast if you want to show the game in a few different rooms of your house. Bar TV? Kitchen TV? Forget it! (To be clear, this is actually a design decision that Amazon consciously made based on how they store and re-encode the video when distributing it to clients in conjunction with the hardware capabilities inside the device. They just made some poor decisions here, in my opinion.) 3. When I look at a scheduled recording, I have no clue what station it is scheduled for. Far too often, the channel numbers are hidden. This is especially a problem when your Recast sees two different stations for the same network. Let's say you get a really strong signal from one CBS affiliate and an okay signal from a second CBS affiliate. For the most part, the recordings only show that it's being recorded on "CBS" but I can't manage which of the two affiliates its being recorded on. There is the ability to hide & show different channels, but you have to set this up on every single client - these don't sync across multiple devices. When you have 5 TVs in the house and 7 Android phones/tablets potentially watching TV, that's an insane amount of micromanagement! Oh, but wait. This isn't even an option on Android, just Fire TV hardware products. So even if you do all of this micromanagement at all 5 TVs, well, you still have no clue if recordings use those non-hidden channels or not because it just shows "CBS". This is just terrible UI and system administration. This all needs to be centralized/sync'd, transparent to the user, and fully-supported in all clients. There are some other problems with the Recast as well. Let's start out talking about the ability to watch DVR'd video anywhere. You can't. It effectively is 100% broke. I have gotten it to work a few times but never for more than about 1-2 minutes. And mostly it just doesn't even work for even 5 seconds, at any quality. If you want to buy this for this ability, don't. It's a 100% waste of your money unless/until they fix this. (My internet is 960mbps down & 45mbps up with a Ubiquiti infrastructure. My internet and infrastructure are very capable of supporting this and so much more.) So it's a steaming pile of crap, right? Well, not really. There are some things that Amazon has done that works very well! Fire TV setup is actually quite easy (no insane remote codes to push in and try - it's fairly automated). Very few button presses are needed when setting up a TV series to record. The Fire TV UI does a somewhat decent job at making currently-aired shows easily discoverable to you, even better if on your "Favorite" stations (again, configured per client). Rewind/fast-forward options are mostly good given the limited buttons on the remote. And video quality is generally quite good (with some occasional hiccups that aren't really problematic, just sometimes some degraded quality for the first few seconds of playback). CONCLUSION: So the super critical things work (aside from streaming while remote). There's just so very much holding this product & platform back that it makes it hard to recommend at this time. Am I going to keep it? Honestly, I don't know. I'm 50/50 on whether to keep this versus sending it all back for a refund (even after Black Friday discounts) and struggling with my TiVo setup for a while longer until something else better comes around. The part of me that wants to keep going knows that this is a v1 product with mostly v1 firmware that will improve over time. That said, I really don't want half a thousand dollars of mine tied up in the hope that Amazon will actually fix these things. I have better uses for that much money, to be honest. So yeah, I just don't know. It's a solid 2.5/5 star product at this point. Could be 4.5+ with some changes but I don't even know how much of these changes are possible with this iteration of the hardware. I suspect the 2-simultaneous-client limitation is unlikely to be fixed in this hardware. And who knows if they'll ever release a better remote but I'm 99% certain they'll want me to pay them for it (i mean, look at the updated Alexa remotes they charged everybody for!). So yeah, this just isn't that good of a product. And I was really disappointed by that. So much potential though...

As many others have noted it could stand a few improvements, especially with the software. The app for example needs to be more robust. And hopefully we will see these improvements in future updates. I read quite a lot of the questions and reviews before ordering so I was aware of its limitations and shortcomings before setting it up and therefore was not disappointed as others have been. My husband had been wanting to “cut the cable TV” for some time now. By cutting the cable TV and returning the rented equipment to the cable company our bill dropped by $108.00 a month! One of the items I was renting was a DVR for $32 per month. In the month since giving up my DVR I have missed it. Yes, you can with the proper app view these shows on Fire TV from various sources but you sometimes have to wait at least a day or sometimes more for them to be available. And clicking your way through menus to get to them was also a hassle. I also found out rather quickly that TV over the Internet had some other issues such as buffering and sometime a channel being “down for maintenance”, whatever that means. I noticed that it happened frequently on my local TV channels. Very annoying if you wanted to watch your local morning news program and it wasn’t available. So my temporary solution was to put an indoor antenna on two of our TV’s. Now when a local channel was unavailable I could switch to the antenna and pull it in. But…this indoor antenna was difficult to position so that it would bring in all of the local stations I wanted and I needed one on each TV. Not to mention unsightly. The kitchen TV could pull in them all but the TV in the office was missing NBC, which is a must for me. So a better antenna solution was needed. My husband and I decided to put an antenna on the roof but the problem was it was January in Ohio with snow, ice, and cold temperatures. The roof antenna would have to wait until spring. Then I suggested that we try it in the attic. That worked. We can now get all of our local channels on every TV in the house. And by the way, we reused all of the coax cable the cable company had run to the various TV’s just unplugging them from their splitter and putting them on our own splitter from the antenna. The only coax cable we had to run was from the attic to the basement and we already had a pipe to send it through from another installation. Now enter the new Fire TV Recast. This did a couple of things for us. First we could watch over-the-air TV on any TV in the house without a cable if we wanted to and also control/watch the DVR from anywhere in the house. We have 5 TV’s with Fire Sticks on each one. Second this enabled us to use just one remote instead of two (we have the new 4K Fire Sticks) and third we do not have to switch the input between antenna and HDMI. That is very nice. And now I have a DVR again that functions very much like the one I turned back in! It only records from the antenna but I quickly realized that 95 percent of what I was recording was available by antenna! Perfect. Setup was as easy as everyone has said. I did spend two hours initially but it was totally because I was trying different locations with the indoor antenna. Once my husband had the attic antenna attached it was quick and easy. There are shortcomings as others have noted and definitely improvements can certainly be made. The app for your phone or tablet needs to be much better. You should be able to do everything on your phone or tablet that you can do on the Fire TV Stick such as scheduling a recording in advance from your phone and not just from what is playing now. I’d also like to see the local channel number on the guide in addition to what is there now. It would also be nice to be able to manage the order of the channels as they appear in your guide. You can do this somewhat by putting your preferred channels in your Favorites. That way they at least show up at the top of the list, but I would like to go a step further and be able to reorder them as I would like putting my most watched channel at the top, etc. On the plus side I love being able to use Alexa for various commands. With voice commands you don’t have to wade through so many menus. Recast is integrated seamlessly with the Fire TV. It is just like it had been there all along. Overall I am pleased with the Recast. I wasn’t disappointed because I knew what to expect. It is definitely for a niche market. It’s not for everyone. You have to have an antenna and be able to receive over-the-air broadcasts. You also need to be invested in Fire TV and will need a Fire device on each TV you want to use with the Recast.

I had read about these and when I recently decided to upgrade my Fire TV, the Recast happened to be on sale, so I ordered one, the 500 GB version. I also decided to upgrade my HD antenna. With the new antenna, my TV, which had previously pulled in 10 good quality channels, now pulled in 18. The Recast pulled in 34 channels! 30 of these channels are clear and watchable, and 22 were crystal clear. Only 4 of these showed a lot of intermittent pixelation. The Recast also shows a menu of the upcoming shows on all the broadcast channels, same format as cable TV, something that was lacking on my TV before I got the Recast. I can simply click on any future show to record it, as well as the entire series for recurring shows. There is an option right there on each recorded show to play it or delete it, this part is really very easy. In the past several days, I’ve recorded several movies and TV shows. It is very easy and works perfectly. On the back of the unit, there is the power port to plug it in, an antenna input, and a powered USB port. The USB port is powered, you can plug your phone or kindle in and it will charge. My powered antenna has a USB input and I plugged it in to the Recast port and it works fine and powers the antenna. I also understand that you may be able to plug in some hard drives to expand the capacity; I haven’t tried this, 500 GB is really very adequate for what I record, and I typically delete recordings after I watch them. And there is a network plug, so if you don’t want to use wireless, you can plug this directly into your router, maybe that is faster. I set this up with the Fire TV app (not the Prime Video app). The Fire TV app is a free download, and it immediately recognized my Recast. Setup was fast and easy, and the channel scan only took about a minute. It integrates seamlessly with my Fire TV. There is a DVR tab on the top of the screen that shows all the functions. The broadcast channels also show on the home screen if you scroll down a few rows. The menu shows the broadcast channels going forward for a day or more, for some channels, several days. And Pluto channels are also included, so you can also access those channels directly from the DVR. You can’t record Pluto channels, you can only record broadcast channels. Overall, I am very happy with this. This device, along with the included Pluto App channels, my Fire TV, and Amazon Prime, and I don’t need or pay for cable at all. Not paying for cable means I recoup the cost of the Recast in less than three months (if you buy it now, while it is still on sale); even if you buy it later and give up cable, you will still recoup the cost in about 5 months. So I highly recommend, I use this every day.

The box itself is small and attractive and it has the convenience of not requiring physical proximity to a television. It also does not require a channel guide subscription/membership as the Tivo OTA, HomeRun HD and the Tablo devices do. The picture seems as clear as my Tivo OTA for recordings... but see below for issues with watching live TV. Overall, it has a lot of potential... but for now, part of that is overshadowed (at least for me) by the issues that I encountered. This device has limited setup instructions (unless you count the enclosed card which is too small to read without a magnifying glass). While most may not need them, it would be nice to know that the LED blinks blue when booting and it glows white when it is ready. It was also picky with the ethernet cable that was connected to it... I had to change it several times, as one was not included. Note that while you require a Fire TV device to watch shows on your television, you will also require a phone or tablet for setup of the Fire TV Recast. After running through setup on the Android "Fire TV" application, there was no indication that it was active on any of my Fire TV devices nor even the Fire TV app (other than the settings menu would respond usually), even though the application said I could select it under the Live option on the main screen. After a forced reboot of the Recast from the app, it finally appeared in "Live" menu on some of my television devices... though all of these devices notified me that the recast had rebooted. On the rest of my Fire TV devices (all of which were also up to date on OS versions), I also had to reboot the device before it appeared... why the lack of consistency? After verification of the scanned channel signals in "Settings -> Live TV -> Channel Management -> Fire TV Recast" and after hiding the Spanish language and religious channels in that Fire TV menu (since I could not do it from the app), I went to watch TV. This inability to block bad signal channels and others is very annoying, as is the signal strength verification status only from a Fire TV since I was setting up my recast no where near a TV and I had to go back and forth to verify that there were no outside issues impeding performance (including verifying the antenna had the best location). At this time, there is no way to permanently exclude a scanned channel from the Recast itself... you have to do it on each device that you use for viewing. While the picture quality is good and the channel changes are relatively quick, there is an irritating popup every few minutes on most of the stations that "weak or no signal - try repositioning your antenna to improve reception". This occurs even when there are no issues with the sound or picture quality... and there unfortunately seems to be no way to disable it. It is far more irritating than any signal loss would be. Since you have no control over nor means to see which station is buffering on each tuner, I wonder if the message is related to shows on the other tuners. This issue is not unique to me, as a quick internet search shows many users in various regions with exactly the same issue have posted on the Amazon forums since about January and Amazon has done nothing yet to correct the issue. As for choosing shows to record with the Recast, this is made difficult by two issues. Firstly, you can only find shows by using the channel guide, with a tedious text search which may not offer that option as it prefers online media, or an "Alexa, record <title>" voice command which works sporadically -- there are no recommendations and there is no list of shows from which to choose for recording. Secondly, while you can select shows to record in the aforementioned ways on the Fire TV devices, this cannot be done on the app -- only shows currently playing on the antenna are displayed as pictures and these are the only episodes that you can select to record, and since there is no guide available you cannot even record the show that starts next. The only way to semi-consistently record searched shows is to use Alexa... as long as she recognises the title and realises that you want to record it on the Recast. As with finding recordings, much of the Fire TV menu systems lacks integration with the Recast. The "Live" menu option only shows pictures for each channel in the first row... everything else on the page is from other Live TV app sources that are installed on the device (ie. Philo, Playstation Vue, Sling, Pluto TV, etc.) or suggested apps to provide more sources (mostly subscription add-ons to your Prime account). The bottom row is designated "Options" which allows menu access to: the channel guide, favorites watching channel favorites designated in the Settings menu, Parental Controls, and Settings for configuring your Live sources. The only other menu option on the main screen that seems to have any relationship to the Recast is "DVR". This again shows the current shows on each channel in the first row as well as recordings in the second row. The third and last row "DVR Manager" has options for: the channel guide, scheduled recordings, recording priority, and finally DVR Settings (takes you to the Settings menu directly). Unfortunately, when watching the Recast tuners, Amazon decided to put the individual channels that have been watched in "Recent" on the "Home" screen... so if you decide to watch 3 or 4 different channels, your other apps move way down the list and as you scroll to them each channel tries to play. I really dislike this interface setting and it is not possible to change it. Firstly, it will occupy a Recast stream if one is available as the list is scrolled... and secondly, the recently used apps eventually get pushed off the end of the list. Instead, it should have just shown a DVR/Live TV icon and left it up to me as to whether I want to occupy a stream and view that history or not. If they want to show history, they would be better to have a row for Live TV in "Live" and a row for recordings in "DVR". Not only do recordings not show under "My Videos", but all the series recordings under "DVR" are presented in reverse order (most recent episode first) when selected by series name. I am not sure about other users, but this is reverse intuitive to me as when I want to watch a series I feel that it should be in chronological order... why would I want to watch "The Orville" in reverse? While most of my recordings had no issues, there were one or two that did not start on time and I am still unsure as to why... the channel had a consistently strong signal without the issue described above, the channel guide had the correct time for the shows, and there were the only two shows recorded on the day that they aired. When playing them, they showed the entire time line on the bottom minus the first 5 minutes 30 seconds or so. When watching videos or live TV, everything seems smooth... unless you decide to view the channel guide while the video plays, then consistently you will get a stutter (jumps back a couple of seconds)... and it repeats this behaviour once again if you exit the guide. While video plays on my tablets, it only streams. While this is great for watching live TV when not at home, it is not great for data caps when watching recordings from the device remotely. Also, as other have mentioned there is a severe limitation on the number of watchable streams... there are only two (2) available, regardless of how many tuners the Recast has and of whether they are live television or recordings -- this means that only two devices can watch shows at any given time without exceptions. While this could have been overcome by adding another Recast, Amazon has limited each account to recognising only one Recast... so this limit means that each Fire TV device can only see the one Recast that is associated with the same account -- so the two stream limit cannot be easily nor conveniently bypassed... unless they modify this in a future software update. While the Recast seems to be the best value proposition overall for recording and watching OTA television (due to its lack of other subscription costs, overall clarity, remote streams, and its support for my current mostly Amazon Fire TV), its eccentricities and issues preclude my recommendation as a primary cord-cutting device at this time. It does work with my original 1st gen FireTV and Amazon has improved the device software since its introduction (ie. added USB storage support, etc.) and they may well address all of my issues in the future... but currently its "weak or no signal" message issue, clunky menu interface, reversed series playback, two-stream limitation, voice-only show finder for recordings, and lack of support for non-Amazon devices are too limiting for most of us, even if we have a mostly Amazon ecosystem at home. At this point, I would recommend going with a Tablo TV tuner, an HD Homerun setup or even a TiVo OTA instead... as their handling of questionable signals are much better, they have higher limits on the number of tuners and streams on an account, their interfaces are recording centric and more intuitive, and their recording systems are much more flexible. I will try recording some more shows this week and see if this signal issue also happens on playback... if so, this will be returned as I cannot bear to watch the Live TV from the device now. I hope this helps those of you that are on the fence, because I would not have tried the device if I had known about the kludges with user interface and the signal messages that appear when I am watching live TV. While I got a discount of 100USD for a pre-Prime Day deal, the limitations are quite significant for me.