Amazon - Fire TV Recast 500GB OTA DVR - Black

It help me to get better signals for my TV channels at my house and DVR function when I needed. Cut your cable cost and cheaper than installation outdoor TV antenna! But you gotta have fire tv stick installed already in order to works and good internet speed connection.

I purchased my Recast (on sale at $129.00 plus tax) about 6 weeks ago, and it has not disappointed. Setting it up was very easy...just connected my antenna, and used the Fire TV app on my phone, which was rather painless. The Recast can be connected wirelessly, or direct to a router with an adapter. Once setup, which took about 10 minutes, I scanned for channels, and was able to get 140 in my area (Simi Valley, CA). This was 50+ more channels than I had with my tv, and smaller convertor box. We regularly watch about 30 of the 140 channels, and unwanted channels can be removed with the favorites setting. The Recast has a 2 week channel guide (at no charge, unlike other OTA DVR's), and you can record 2 shows at the same time. Recordings can be set from the guide, and you have the option to record a one-time show, or make a series recording. We use Philo and Pluto TV as well. The great thing about this is that the Recast allows you to integrate Philo and Pluto channels into the guide, so you do not have to open each app separately to see what is airing. The Recast also allows the pausing, rewinding and fast-forwarding of any live tv channel (that comes from your antenna only). Since Philo has a built in DVR, you can do the same with those channels. Pluto currently does not have any DVR function, so we are limited to watching those channels live only. The Recast also allows you to stream the OTA channels to any other Fire device that is connected to the same network. This eliminates the need to run cables to each of you tv's, which can be a pain. Although I do not consider it a con, others may since it does not work with any other streaming device (ROKU, Apple TV, etc). My only gripe about the Recast occurs when you are using the guide. Once you are on a channel, but decide to bring up the guide to see what else is playing, the guide will appear and the current channel that you are watching will be reduced to a small screen. This is nice as it allows you to continue watching your program while channel surfing. The downside is if after scrolling through numerous channels you want to go full screen with the show you were watching (you didn't find anything else to watch), there is no option for this. You need to go back up (or down) the guide until you get to that channel and hit enter. If you hit the back button on the Fire remote, it will take you out of the program and back to the main menu where you started. This is annoying but not a deal breaker for me. Lastly, with the FireTV app on my phone, I am able to watch any OTA channels outside of my home, as well as any recordings I have. The one shortcoming is that the phone app does not have the channel guide and you are limited to recording only what you are currently watching.

Bought this for my (not so tech savvy) parents and they love it!!y Mom likes to record her shows every day at a certain time and since her VCR quit working this took its place. Very nice!!

The recast unlike several over the air dvr's does not require a monthly fee for its use or for its program guide. That comes with it for the device purchase price so to you don't incur a monthly fee to use it. Tuner works well. I live in a fringe antenna reception area and its signal does about the same as my large antenna does on my lg tv. The only drawbacks I have with it are 1. since I live in a fringe area where my signal on vhf channels is weak enough that multi-path or atmospheric conditions can sometimes interfere with it I often get an annoying message on the vhf channels from the recast saying weak signal try adjusting the antenna. I really wish there was a way to turn of that annoying message because it even happens while the signal is still strong enough to not pixelate or lose any of the picture except for that message covering the bottom center of the picture. 2. I've been noticing a lot of bandwidth being used by the firetv ecosystem and I've been trying to find info. online to minimize how much its using but what I've found so far looks like it may still blow through the local cable co. monthly bandwidth cap. It apparently keeps using bandwidth so long as the firetv sticks are plugged into the tv's hdmi ports even though the power cord to the sticks are unplugged so to stop it from using bandwidth one must either disconnect them from the tv's hdmi port or cut off the power to the tv set. Overall the recast works well aside from those two issues and I have been able to set it up with features to record tv shows whereby it automatically records the new episodes of them whenever they are on. Also it has options to choose between different picture qualities on the recording to save recording space with standard definition instead of the more memory intensive high definition picture. It also has an additional feature allowing you to priotize your shows so if multiple shows are on at the same time it knows which ones to give recording priority with its two tuners. You can watch one show while recording another with it or you can do as i have done with a splitter on the antenna line between my tv and the recast to allow me to watch what I want on the tv while still being able to have two recordings taking place on the recast at the same time. Another nice feature is in addition to its one half terrabyte of memory built into the recast I was able to hook my one half terrabyte seagate external hard drive up to it through its usb port to double my available recording memory space. The fire tv ecosystem with this recast will incorporate your antenna tv channels into a guide along with pluto tv's free channels all in one guide and this guide can be tweaked to show all channels, only favorites or even hide channels from it Nice feature that will be even better if more streaming services get incorporated into it which I heard that PHILO also works with this channel guide and some others may be working on the app to get included. Good product Amazon but it will be better if you drop the weak signal message or give us a way to disable it. That would have gotten you 5 stars. Also it would be good to find a way to stop the firetv ecosystem from using bandwith without having to cut the power to the tv or unplug the stick's hdmi from the tv.

First let me start by saying this is probably the best option available for OTA programming available, if you have an Amazon Prime subscription and Fire TV Sticks on the TV's you want to use this on. If I had to do it over again I would probably get the 4 tuner version as sometimes there might be more than two channels you want to record and watch at the same time. Several years later it still has it's quirks and I sometimes need to restart it as the Fire TV Sticks will not connect to it. All my sticks are the 4K version and are connected via WiFi in a small home and sometimes they will not connect even though they might be as close as 15 feet from the router. Restarting usually solves this issue. When you fast forward sometimes it will show the preview sometimes not. You cannot watch one tuner program the other tuner to a different channel and go back to the other channel as the tuner that is in the background will disconnect after a certain amount of time of inactivity. So actually two tuners is not truly two tuners as one will go to sleep after a while. Very annoying. Overall though while these quirks are annoying they are not a deal breaker. The product is easy to use, the remote only has a few buttons. Ease of use was one reason we had not cancelled our cable service but this is just as easy to operate. We have saved money over paying for cable/satellite service with much more viewing options. With all that having been said it is still a good option for cord cutting.

Love this box! It was the last step I needed to cutting the cable cord! I had 2 issues that kept me from cutting satellite 1. was DVR 2. was local channel signals (I am too far from the city to receive local channels. This box was my salvation. I have a $5 antenna stuck to the best signal window in the house that is plugged into this bad boy. It is in one of the few rooms in my house without a TV. It transmits the live signal to all 5 tv's in my house that has a firestick. And, it tapes all my favorite shows. It has better signal strength than the antenna on its own. I am so happy, that I bought this same unit for my parents!

Great OTA transmission from one device. I use to have OTA antennas connected to my five (5) different TV's (all connected to Amazon Fire TV/ sticks). Now I only have ONE antenna connected to this Recast and can watch OTA channels on all my 5 other TV's without individual antenna's connected to each, ( can watch up to 2 TV's at the same time). No longer have to switch the TV Inputs to watch OTA channels, just watch through the Recast. Has an OTA TV Guide too! Great.

The recast device is an excellent OTA recorder. Relatively easy to set-up and use. Like other similar Streaming and OTA recording devices, learning how to navigate and access all functions with the remote control provided takes a little practice. So far the unit has performed without any issues and picture quality is good. Having a good antenna helps.