Catching Fire (Streaming TV that is)

So in my previous blog post, I mentioned that in September of last year, Amazon announced the Fire TV Recast, an OTA (Over-The-Air or 'broadcast TV') DVR (Digital Video Recorder). Check out that post to read the reasons why I found the device so interesting.

Well, I had a hunch that with Black Friday around the corner, the regular price of $279 for a 4-tuner, 1-terabyte storage Recast would be reduced. The list price for 2-tuner, 500 megabyte storage is $229. Sure enough, the week of Thanksgiving (and as I write this) the price was lowered to $229. Luckily, the price of the Fire TV Stick 4K was reduced (and still is) from $49.99 to $39.99.

Why 'lucky'? Well, you can only view live or recorded OTA programs on Fire TV Recast through an Amazon Fire TV-capable device. What does this mean? To watch Recast programming on TV, you either need a 'Fire TV Edition' television or a Fire TV Stick. I have a very old Sony 51 inch LCD TV, so I needed a Fire TV stick, and I bought it along with the Fire TV Recast.

I currently subscribe to Dish satellite TV. The cable from the satellite dish comes into a receiver with a DVR. An HDMI cable runs from the receiver to a Sony Surround Sound Amplifier. I also have a Roku connected to the amp. An HDMI cable runs from the amp to the Sony TV. I have an antenna in my attic connected to the TV with a coaxial cable. When the satellite TV goes out for whatever reason (heavy thunderstorms, hurricanes) I can switch over to my antenna input to continue watching broadcast (over-the-air) TV.

So I mentioned that I have a Roku streaming device. It is a wonderful device. Years of development has led to a user interface that is intuitive, fluid, and very responsive. However, at this time, there is no Fire TV application (app) like there is for Netflix, Hulu, or Amazon Prime. Therefore, a Fire TV Stick (or other Fire TV device) is necessary to view recordings on the Fire TV Recast. The Fire TV Stick has many of the same capabilities as the Roku, but needs to do its homework to catch up to the ease of use of the Roku, which I consider the gold standard of streaming devices.

I won't bore you with all the details of setting up the Fire TV Recast and Fire TV Stick, but simply write that installation was fairly straightforward using the quick start instructions and on-screen prompting through the TV. The end result was that I had moved the coaxial cable from the TV to the Fire TV Recast device and plugged in the Fire TV Stick to one of the HDMI inputs on my amp. The Recast and Stick devices are connected to and communicate through my home network's WiFi.

Thanksgiving weekend our house caught 'Fire'. How is the Fire TV Stick paired with the Fire TV Recast working for us? Well, for the most part, it has worked reasonably well, once we understood the user interface (menu options, etc.). But there are some problems. I've rambled on too long for this post, so check out my next post when I'll get into the details.

Until then, thanks for reading!

Phil

P.S. Future blog post teaser alert: Nest and Ring lowered the price of their video doorbells this week. I have a brand new Ring waiting to be installed. Stay tuned!