To cast or Recast, that is the question.

During August of last year, my wife and I visited our daughter in Charlotte, NC. She's a graduate student at UNC Charlotte. Near the beautiful campus is a unique Goodwill store called The Grid.

The store carries reconditioned donated electronics like TVs, video games, computers, tablets, etc (geek paradise). They also had several first generation Google Chromecast devices for $14.99.

So as my souvenir of our trip to Charlotte, I bought one for myself (I have way too many T-Shrits). We already own a Roku, but I wanted to see how Chromcast functions and how it compares to the Roku box and its capabilities. My expectations weren't very high, since it is a first generation, and they were reasonably met. It was relatively easy to set up and worked as advertised. The cool thing was that using the Chromecast app on my phone, I could 'cast' video and photos directly from my phone to our TV. But after some research, I realized that I could do the same thing with the Roku app. The nice thing about the Roku app is that each home of my extended family has a Roku device. When we visit, we simply connect to their Roku and show the latest pictures of our adventures directly from our phones to the 'big screen'. That's quite a change from last century's white sheet on the wall and a Kodak carousel slide projector!

So testing the Chromecast was a nice exercise. For $15 It gave me 'casting' experience, satisfied my curiosity, and dispelled my Chromecast technology FOMO (Fear Of Missing Out). I'm sure that the latest generation of Chromecast has much more functionality and integration, so I may check it out in the future. Or, perhaps one of my clients may need some help with their Chromecast configuration.

Still curious about my blog title 'to cast or Recast'? Well, a month later in September, 2019, there was buzz about a new device from Amazon called Fire TV Recast

Recast is an OTA (Over-The-Air) DVR (Digital Video Recorder). It gives you the ability to record broadcast TV from a high definition antenna. There are numerous OTA DVRs in the market that can simultaneously record from one to four channels, however, most of the popular brands require a nominal monthly or annual fee for access to the "Channel Guide". The 'guide' is used to schedule the device to record future programs (one time, or recurring). The somewhat unique thing about the Recast is that it requires no subscription fees. I came across one OTA-DVR manufacturer that had no recurring fees, but their hardware price was essentially a year's worth of subscription fees higher than their competitors' hardware prices.

So this announcement got me pretty excited, especially when I read that it would work with the Amazon Echo, which I wrote about in a previous blog entry. However, my main interest in Recast was to be able to record and view (as well as 'pause') OTA programming on my TV. How does it work? Is it like my satellite DVR where the coax cable comes in to the house from the dish, connects to the DVR, then an HDMI cable runs through my surround sound amplifier?

That's a good question, but I've rambled on for too long, so I'll answer that question in my next entry.

Until then, thanks for reading!

Phil