Amazon Announces Fire TV Recast, a Network-Connected DVR for Cord-Cutters

By Janko Roettgers, Variety
Published Sep. 20, 2018, 3:46 p.m. ET

Amazon used its fall event in Seattle Thursday to announce a network-connected DVR. Dubbed the Fire TV Recast, the device is capable of recording free over-the-air broadcast programming and stream it to multiple devices.

Fire TV Recast will cost $229.99 for a two-tuner version with an integrated 500GB hard drive. The company will also sell a 4-tuner version with a 1TB hard drive, which is able to record up to 4 shows at a time, at some later time, and didn’t reveal pricing for that model Thursday.

In many ways, Fire TV Recast is very similar to Tablo’s network-connected DVR for cord cutters. As such, it will have to deal with some of the same issues that other networked DVRs have faced before. Many consumers still aren’t quite used to DVRs that don’t plug directly into their TV, and anyone ditching their cable subscription may be underwhelmed by the programming available on broadcast channels.

Amazon is looking to mitigate some of those issues by closely integrating Fire TV Recast with its existing devices. Echo Show owners will be able to stream broadcast recordings straight to their smart display, and Amazon is promising to simplify DVR control with its Alexa voice assistant.

Word of Amazon working on a networked DVR first broke in August, when Bloomberg reported about such plans.

Amazon also used Thursday’s events to announce a plethora of other devices, including a subwoofer, a Hi-fi receiver, an amplifier, an audio adapter and revamped versions of its Echo Plus and Echo Show devices.