Amazon this morning introduced a new device called the Fire TV Recast that works with Fire TV and other devices to allow you to record live TV through a connected digital antenna. The device allows you to place your digital antenna anywhere in the house where you can get good reception, without having to worry about having your connected media player device – like a Fire TV or Echo Show – also having to be nearby.
As Amazon explained, the Recast allows you to separate out where the actual recording happens and where the viewing happens.
The device also helpfully includes an app that will help you find the spot that has the highest attenuation for your antenna, so you can place it appropriately. The device then uses “an advanced wireless system,” to deliver the streams to other connected devices.
It can stream to your Fire TV, Echo Show, Echo Spot (the alarm clock) or even iOS and Android devices.
With your antenna, you can pick up over-the-air channels like ABC, NBC, CBS, FOX and others. How well you receive them, of course, will depend on your geographic location.
The device allows you to record two or four shows at a time, depending on which version of the Recast you choose, them stream to multiple devices.
If you have a Recast set up in your home, your Fire TV interface will include a new DVR menu up in the top and the Home screen will inform you about live programming you can watch now. You can even see a free preview of what’s on.
The DVR feature, meanwhile, will show you all your recordings.
There’s also a new channel guide in the Fire TV that will show what’s on live, and will feature partner content. For example, if you’ve subscribed to a Prime Video Channel, its content will be interspersed in here as well.
Preorders for the Fire TV Recast start today at $229. That’s for two tuners and a 500 gigabyte DVR. Amazon also offers a four tuner one terabyte version.
All will ship before the holidays.
News of the device’s existence was previously reported by Bloomberg, who said it was referred to internally as the codename “Frank.”
The idea here is to complement Amazon’s other Fire TV media players – devices that Amazon wants to become more of a central part of the home not only for entertainment, but also for smart home control, and of course, for adding things to lists and shopping Amazon.
The new hardware unveiled today will compete with Dish’s Slingbox and AirTV, TiVo devices, and to some extent, with home media software platforms, like Plex, which also allows for watching and recording live TV with select third-party hardware.
Amazon’s device is meant to serve the growing number of cord cutters who are ditching cable TV for ad hoc solutions combining favorite streaming services, and sometimes, local over-the-air channels.
Source: TechCrunch http://j.mp/2POZAuH
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