This week on TechHive: Is the Fire TV Recast still worth buying?

Jared Newman
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November 12, 2021

Amid Amazon’s vast lineup of Fire TV devices, the Fire TV Recast seems like the ugly duckling.

This over-the-air antenna DVR launched nearly three years ago, letting you stream video from an antenna onto other Fire TV devices throughout the house, but it’s received hardly any significant software improvements since. In interviews, Amazon has subtly indicated that the Recast hasn’t been a huge hit with cord-cutters, and some of its features have become trickier to access in the Fire TV’s most recent interface update.

This week, however, the Fire TV Recast was briefly on sale for $114—down from its original $230—and I suspect we’ll see similar discounts pop up around Black Friday. So I decided to dust off my review unit, take another look, and see if it’s still a worthy investment. Read the full column on TechHive.

Weekly rewind

Frndly TV adds A&E (and a price hike): The super-skinny streaming bundle Frndly TV is adding seven A&E channels to its lineup on November 18, including The History Channel, Lifetime, LMN, FYI, Military History, ViceTV, and A&E proper. That brings the service’s total channel count to over 31, with Hallmark Channel, Weather Channel, and CuriosityStream among its other more notable offerings.

But the new arrivals have also brought a $1 per month price hike along with them. Frndly TV now starts at $7 per month for SD video and one stream at a time with no DVR service. A $9 per month plan adds HD video, two simultaneous streams, and DVR service that stores recordings for up to three months, while an $11 per month plan supports four simultaneous streams and expands DVR storage to nine months. Despite the hike, it’s still an intriguing service if your live channel needs are minimal.

Yellowstone confusion: Over at The Streamable, Steve Anderson and Ben Bowman have a helpful explainer on why you can’t watch Yellowstone on Paramount+. The short version: The hit show is exclusive to the Paramount cable channel, and ViacomCBS previously dealt away the show’s streaming rights to Peacock, which doesn’t carry new episodes until three months after the full season wraps up on cable. That means season 4 won’t hit Peacock until late March.

The good news is that you don’t have to wait that long even if you don’t get the Paramount channel. Like many other cable and network TV shows, you can buy the full season of Yellowstone on iTunes, Vudu, or the Google Play Store, with new episodes becoming available the day after they air on TV. It beats having to pay for an entire TV bundle just to watch one show.

Netflix’s efficiency improvements: Netflix says it’s managed to reduce drops in video quality by 38% on some smart TVs, while also reducing buffering times and improving video quality on congested networks. The not-so-secret ingredient is a new codec called AV1, which squishes video down to a smaller size so it doesn’t need as much bandwidth to stream. While AV1 has been in development for years—here’s a story I wrote about it in 2015, before it even had that name—only now are the necessary hardware decoders starting to work their way into smart TVs and streaming players.

Before you get too excited, Netflix’s device support list is frustratingly vague about which devices are eligible, listing a handful of 2020 Samsung TVs, “select” Fire TV devices, “select” Android TV devices, and the PlayStation 4 Pro. Besides, it’s still early days for AV1, and most other streaming services don’t yet support the codec at all. Still, more devices are likely to support AV1 over time, and Netflix’s early endorsement is a sign of smoother streaming to come.

More catch-up

Save more money

Tablo’s refurbished Dual Lite over-the-air DVR is on sale for just $60. Unlike the aforementioned Recast, you have to supply your own external hard drive and tack on a subscription for most DVR features, but it’s still a superior option if you value long-term software updates and broad device support. Keep in mind that other Tablo models will be on sale later this month, so hold off on this one if you want more tuners or built-in storage.

Also: I apologize if you came up empty on the promo code I mentioned in last week’s newsletter for a free month of Paramount+. It turns out that code had expired shortly before I sent out the newsletter, and and it was promptly replaced by a new one, VETERANS. As long as you don’t have an active subscription, you can enter the new code at checkout to get a free ad-free Paramount+, even if you’ve redeemed other codes in the past.

Lastly on the deal front, new Disney+ subscribers can get their first month for $2—a response, perhaps, to slowing growth for the service. You’ll have to sign up by November 14 to get this deal.

Thanks for reading!

As I noted at the end of this week’s TechHive column, Amazon seems to think that antennas are declining in popularity as people lean into streaming services. I’m curious to hear your thoughts on the matter, as antenna coverage has typically been popular in this newsletter. Are you still an over-the-air die-hard, or have you too moved to a streaming-only cord cutting strategy? As always, your questions and feedback help inform what I write about, so let me know what’s on your mind!

Until next week,

Jared

Cord Cutter Weekly is a labor of love by tech journalist Jared Newman. Say hi on Twitter, and spread the word that there’s a better kind of TV out there.