All about cord cutting and Amazon's fireTV. What's going on? I'm rich Damiro. This is rich on Tech. Joining me today is Elias Saba. He is the creator of aftvnews dot com. Thanks so much for joining me.
Good to be here.
So fan of the website, obviously, you are kind of the king when it comes to all things Amazon and Amazon devices. Tell me how you started this site and what you concentrate on.
Well, essentially started because I was out of a job, didn't really want to polish my resume and start, you know, going out there looking for another job. Want to see if I could start my own thing, give myself a little more flexibility. The fire TV, the very first one, back in twenty fourteen, was released. I was interested in it. I bought it. I liked it. I thought there was a lot more you could do with it, a lot
more that people didn't know about. And so I started the site just kind of on a whim, almost out of just boredom, started writing about it, and it slowly started picking up speed, and then you know, started growing, and just kind of been doing it ever since. And now it's my full time job and never touched that
resume since it is literally every day. I wake up every morning see what happened while house as sleep to see if there'snything I need to cover, and then I go from there, and when there's nothing new to cover, I try to figure out interesting things people would want to know about or want to do with fire TV devices.
So Amazon has this new device, the fireTV Recast, which is sort of a DVR for your local over the air channels. What do you make of this device?
I think it's a pretty good device. It's not the be all, end all best DVR over the air solution out there, that's for sure. You know, they're still missing a few key features here. It still needs a little bit of polish, especially on the software side. I think the hardware is really solid. It gives you what you want.
There two tuners HD recording. You can record two shows at once or four shows right depending on the one you get.
There are two models. There's a five hundred gigabyte two tuner model and then there's a one terrible four tuner model. With that four tuner model, you can record four things at once with the two tune or two things. Obviously, both of them are limited to streaming to only two devices at once, regardless of which one you buy. So you can technically be watching two pieces of content that you've recorded and be recording four different channels at the
same time. So there's six different things going on there, but you can only watch from two different devices simultaneously.
Set up process. How do you think they did on that, like just physically setting up? And what do you need for this to work?
So what you need is the fire TV recast. Obviously, you technically don't need a fire TV because the fire TV recast is compatible with smartphones, so you can watch the content through an Android or an Apple smartphone or a tablet. You can also watch through an Amazon Echo Show.
That's kind of cool, so I can have an Echo Show on my desk and that could literally be a little TV that I can just keep a live stream on all day.
Yeah, definitely. If you've got that Echo show device and you say that voice assistant name that al Exa, and you literally just say tuned to a certain channel, that channel will pop right up. You can even tell it to start recording a certain show for you and it will just automatically record that show for you. You can ask it to bring up your recordings that you've already recorded and either use the touchscreen or use your voice.
So if you've got the device sitting there in the kitchen, you can be cooking something or washing the dishes and just use your voice to pull up anything that you've recorded or anything that's airing live over your broadcast channel. So there is that aspect of it. If you do want to watch your content, your over the air antenna content on your television right now, you have to have
a fire TV device. Any Fire TV model that has ever come out from twenty fourteen to now is compatible with this, So it isn't you don't have to buy one of the newer devices that just got released or anything like that. But if you have a Roku, if you have an Apple TV, or any of those competing
media streamers right now, they're not compatible. Amazon has hinted that there are they're considering adding support and being able to watch your fire TV recast content through those competing media players, but I would say that's probably not going to happen for a little while, just because they've got a lot of polish left to do on the mobile app. That's probably going to be where their focus is going to be.
So when this thing first came out, I thought it was pretty amazing because I'm a big TV guy. I used to be. I mean I back in two thousand and I got my first TV O, loved it, was a huge fan probably until about I don't know, maybe five or six years ago, and I kind of just
gave up on it, like altogether one hundred percent. And now I'm a cord cutter, and I love this idea because the station I work for KTLA is the only station basically that I do not receive at my house through direct TV now, and so I thought this was a great way to kind of plug that open hole, right.
But the one thing I noticed is that you cannot download a show from the recast to your device, which to me is the killer is the killer feature, Like if I take a plane flight, I just want to download a show like a couple comedies from you know, local new or local show or maybe some local newscasts, whatever, sports game. Who knows? Why can't I do that with the fire with the recast?
Well, most likely the answer to that is because Amazon didn't have time to add that feature in. That's That's probably the main reason I've heard the exact same feedback from from my readers where they all kind of want
that feature. I myself, I'm actually planning to to take apart at the Fire TV recast see if I can get to that hard drive inside to see if there's actually a way, you know, for for the the really you know, geeky enthusiast out there who wants to get nitty gritty with with it, you probably will be able to pull off that content. Amazon has said they've They've told me that they don't they don't protect the recordings
in any way. They're not copy protected. They just don't provide any kind of interface, any kind of way to get to that content. So whatever's coming out of the antenna, it's just getting recorded to a regular old rob video file. And so if there's some way to pull that file off, you're gonna be able to watch it offline on your devices. It's just I think Amazon just hasn't had the time
to bake that feature in there. They have said that they are going to soon add the ability to plug in an external hard drive into the Fire to recast to expand the internal storage, so it has that five hundred gigabyt or one terrorbyte hard drive built into it. And so if you want to record even more than that, those hard drives for people wondering, the five hundred gigabyte will record seventy five hours of HD content, whereas the one terabyte will double that to one hundred and fifty hours.
And so if that's not enough for you or you want to save that, you know, you know that that series, that ten ten year long series, and you don't want to compromise and give up any of that recorded content. You'll soon be able to plug in a hard drive and record onto that hard drive. And now a feeling once they're able to do that, Now you've got this
content kind of free floating away from the recast. So you might be able, we don't know yet, to plug that hard drive into a computer for example, maybe even into a smartphone and offload that content onto other devices. We'll have to see, you know again, don't hold your breath. Yeah, but it's that TiVo.
I feel like TiVo always made it so complicated. Even when you could, you know, attach an external drive, You're never able to just tap into those recordings, pull them all. There's just no way you had to use their special trans coding software, which was a nightmare and it took like an hour of like a five minute show or something ridiculous. Well, let's hope that Amazon does not go
down that path. So the other thing about this device is it too late because we have people getting into the world of cord cutting, but they've kind of found a lot of these solutions. So if someone gets this, do I ditch my direct TV now? Because now I'm like, well, I don't really need all those channels. I just kind of wanted my locals.
I don't think it's too late because the fire TV recast basically it fills a hole that these other services
don't provide. Like you were saying, there's no way to get your local you know, KTLA broadcasts from these big nationwide internet TV solutions like Sling TV, like DirecTV now, and so really, if you want all that content, you know, something like PBS for example, you're not gonna be able to stream that through those nationwide services, and you know, connecting antenna to a device like the fire TV recast
is literally your only option right now. And so if you want that full, you know, top to bottom solution, the fire TV recast is there for you, and so it's not meant to basically be the reason you cut
the cord necessarily, although it can be. You know, some people, I can see a lot of people who will basically be happy just streaming from Prime Video, from Netflix, from HBO now and then getting their local stations from their fire TV recast and really not caring about those fifty or so network cable channels that they get from you know, their local cable or satellite you know service with TVO, with all the other DVR tableau, even HD home Run, which is kind of more of a role of your
own solution, there's always a subscription fee with those devices.
Telling about the fireTV at large, this is this is a pretty big player on the streaming platforms. You've got the Apple TV, You've got the fire TV, You've got Roku, and sort of Chrome cast. Android TV as a platform is kind of like not really there anymore. We haven't really seen a new product. It's kind of all focused on the Chrome Cast. So where do you see this as the best platform out there? And what are the shortcomings of the fire TV versus some of the other ones out there.
I mean, I do personally think to the best because you know, I'm the one who chose it and is running the whole site on it, but it's definitely not the best for everybody. The streaming media player you know, market right now is very you know, split between all of these advices, Like you said, the fire TV, the Rokus, and the Apple TV's kind of are the three big ones.
Andrew TV is still there. They've got you know, Nvidia Shield TV is a very good, good product, but it is on the pricey side and it does quite a bit, but for most people they don't need all that functionality.
The biggest difference that I can think of at this point is that fire TV has a web version of YouTube.
There's no service that isn't available on there as much with the fire TV, you know, like you were saying, there is that issue with YouTube, but it's almost a misconception because while there is no native app, you know, to access YouTube on the fire TV, you're going through a browser to access the TV browser interface of YouTube.
But really on the Roku's, on the Apple TVs, even on Google's own Android TV devices, those dedicated real quote unquote YouTube apps, all they are are accessing that exact same web YouTube interface, and so if you put those two devices side by side, the Fire TV and app Google's own Android TV devices, and you access YouTube, the interface looks identical and the feature set is almost identical.
One thing you miss with the fire TVs on YouTube specifically is you don't get sixty frames per second playback. You're limited to thirty frames per second, but you do get four K playback. But on the Android TVs you do get that sixty frames per second four K playback,
and so there is a slight advantage there. I'm not sure about rocoan Apple TV whether they handle that sixty prints per second, But with YouTube, you actually are getting an equivalent, you know, nearly nine nine percent equivalent option on fire TV. I don't you know. It's it's hard for me not to sound like a cheerleader for the fire TV. I know, because I like the.
Way I wrote the site. Basically, I basically, yeah, I know TV news dot Com.
I know, I know everything about the device, so I can't help but just talk about all the nitty gritty details.
What's your recommendation from buying a fire TV this holiday season? Which one do I get?
I think definitely the Fire TV stick four K. It's basically their middle product. It just came out. It has the most powerful process or even more powerful than they're much more expensive hundred and twenty dollars Fire TV cube. That little four K stick is actually more powerful than that cube. You know. I did a whole benchmark about it just to just to you know, prove that to everybody, because people just couldn't believe it. But it's it's a
great little device. It's only ten dollars more expensive than their their base ten ADP Fire TV stick, So you might be tempted to go for that one, but I say it's well worth that extra ten dollars mostly because you get the newer remote control with that, the newer Alexa Voice remote that comes with the Fire TV Stick four K that does not come with the base Fire TV stick has power buttons, volume buttons, and new buttons on the remote.
That's big.
That's big. That's huge. People have been asking that ever since twenty fourteen, when that very first Fire TV came out. Amazon finally put that out there. Just came out a couple weeks ago, and and something that a lot of people don't even realize a lot of big tech reviewers didn't even cover in their review is that that remote. It has universal remote capabilities built in. On top of being able to control power, volume and mute for your TV.
You can actually speak into the remote, tell it change HDMI input three, you know, tune two KTLA for example. It will actually turn on your TV, turn on your receiver or soundbar, change inputs, control your cable box, tune into the right channel, all with that one single command, all through that little remote control. And you're getting that for that extra ten dollars over the base Fire TV stick. So it's well worth it. I definitely say go for that.
And how much is it?
Fifty dollars forty nine ninety nine is the retail price?
All right? Elias Saba tell people how to get in touch with you.
To avnews dot com. If you like anything that we talked about. There's much more detail there. You can follow me at alias E l I A. S On Twitter. Also just started Instagram, so at ESAVA. I guess I'll go ahead and throw that in there. I'll probably post some pictures of our little interview.
Thanks so much for joining me today on the podcast. If you want links, you don't have to worry about writing it down. Just going to the website richon tech dot tv, or you can check the show notes. Thanks so much for listening. Let me know what you think of the show. You can find me on Twitter at rich tamiro. I'll talk to you real soon