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Amazon Fire TV Recast review: the cord cutter's DVR
The Google Assistant smart home ecosystem is slowly starting to take shape
Samsung Galaxy S10's chipset? Exynos 9820 unveiled with 20% speed boost, AI chip

Amazon Fire TV Recast review: the cord cutter's DVR

Posted: 14 Nov 2018 06:00 AM PST

Amazon's big fall hardware event saw the introduction of the impressive Fire TV Stick 4K and a slew of other products, but as a home theater nerd, I was most interested in the Fire TV Recast. The Recast is basically Amazon's 2018 take on the Slingbox; it's a chunky device that'll let you watch live TV anywhere or record shows to a DVR for later viewing. The Recast is designed to integrate seamlessly with Amazon's Fire TV streaming devices; your live TV channels show up in their own row on the Fire TV home screen, and you can use Alexa to change channels or schedule a DVR recording with your voice.

The Recast only works with over-the-air (OTA) channels that it pulls down via a connected antenna. You can't hook up a cable box to it. But rather, the big selling point is that the Recast will give you watch-anywhere access to ABC, CBS, Fox, and NBC, plus PBS and a couple dozen filler channels. Other companies (namely Tablo) have tried their hand at this, but Amazon's attempt is part of a much bigger vision.

7.5 Verge Score

Good Stuff

Lets you record and watch OTA channels anywhere
Seamless integration with Fire TV and Alexa voice commands
Reliable streaming performance

Bad Stuff

Limited to two concurrent streams
BYOA (bring your own antenna)
Mobile app isn't nearly as good as Fire TV experience

Instead of building an internet TV bundle in the style of Sling TV, Playstation Vue, or YouTube TV, Amazon is going in a different direction. Through Prime Channels, it sells subscriptions to third-party streaming services and intertwines that programming with its own Prime Video content. The Fire TV Recast now becomes a central fixture of Amazon's big plan moving forward. Are the big four networks, Prime Video, and a few add-ons of your choosing (HBO, Showtime, Starz, CBS All Access, etc.) enough to keep you entertained? Everyone's answer will be different, but I can tell you that the Fire TV Recast does exactly what it promises. There are definitely things Amazon needs to improve, but this is a solid first effort.

The Fire TV Recast contains a hard drive and the necessary tuners for streaming and/or recording shows, sports, and movies. But you'll need to provide your own antenna. The 500GB model ($230) has two tuners, while the 1TB version ($280) has four. Amazon is offering a bundle that includes the Fire TV Stick 4K, a 35-mile antenna, and the 500GB Recast for $250. That seems like the obvious way to go to me, but maybe you're someone who just wants to record all the things and decide what to watch later on. Amazon has a good breakdown of what you can do with each model:

With a 2-tuner Fire TV Recast, you can either:

Record up to 2 programs at once,
Watch up to 1 live and 1 recorded program on different devices, while recording another;
Watch up to 2 recorded programs on different devices, while recording 2 programs in the background; OR
Watch up to 2 live programs on different devices at once.

With a 4-tuner Fire TV Recast, you can either:

Record up to 4 programs at once;
Watch up to 1 live and 1 recorded program on different devices, while recording up to 3 other programs in the background;
Watch up to 2 recorded programs on different devices, while recording up to 4 programs in the background; OR
Watch up to 2 live programs on different devices at once while recording up to 2 other programs in the background.

Amazon estimates the 500GB model is good for 75 hours of HD DVR recordings, with the 1TB model storing up to 150 hours. But notice how that four-tuner section makes no mention of watching live TV on four devices at once? It's because you can't. The biggest restriction you'll run into when using the Recast is concurrent streams: Amazon only allows two devices to stream from it at a time. This is true whether you're just watching prerecorded content from the DVR or streaming live programming.

I really think that number should be higher, as two streams simply won't be enough to cover many homes if people are out of the house and everyone wants to watch the Oscars or Sunday football. "We limit the number of streams on Fire TV Recast to two in order to guarantee the most reliable, high-quality HD streams on all your compatible devices," an Amazon spokesperson told me, adding that the company believes "two simultaneous streams is adequate for the vast majority of households." Amazon and I strongly disagree! It might up the limit eventually, but the company told me it's got nothing firm to announce in the near term.

Design-wise, the Fire TV Recast is a big hulking black box with ventilation dots covering its entire front. It's not a pretty gadget, but the idea is for you to place it in whatever spot gets the best antenna reception in your house or apartment. That means you'll likely put it beside a window somewhere, but maybe that'll end up being in the attic or in a bedroom. Either would be totally fine; the Recast streams live programming to your Fire TV devices wirelessly. (You can plug in ethernet for an optimal connection if you've got a jack near wherever the Recast goes.) If you already own an antenna, it should work just fine, and the Recast has a USB port for antennas that need power.

When going through the setup process, the Fire TV app will use your location to determine which direction the antenna should face for ideal signal strength. And antenna placement definitely matters; in my case, it made the difference between getting ABC and not. Once that's done, the Recast will perform a scan of channels that are available in your area. I got two channels each for NBC and CBS, which is a thing that happens with antennas. You can pick just one of them as a favorite if the redundancy bothers you. If you're watching on Fire TV, Amazon displays a cable-like programming guide with details provided by Gracenote.

You can schedule recordings up to two weeks in advance, either choosing to record an episode or a whole series. More importantly, you can add some buffer recording time to the beginning or end of a program's scheduled time slot, which is crucial for sports and live events. If you're wondering why Amazon doesn't do this automatically, the company says it wants to "avoid recording over a previously scheduled show or event." When the DVR is full, the Recast will automatically start deleting the oldest content first to prevent missed recordings. You can protect recordings to keep them from being deleted.

You don't technically need a Fire TV product to use the Recast. You can plug in an antenna and set up the device with the Fire TV mobile app on Android or iOS, and then use that app to start watching live programming immediately. But Amazon hamstrings this experience in several ways. You can't schedule DVR recordings when away from home; the app can only start recording something already in progress. (Amazon tells me that it's "actively exploring the ability to schedule future recordings on mobile.") And the mobile app doesn't let you hide the weird OTA channels you'll never, ever watch; it just shows a big list of everything. You need a Fire TV to choose favorites (which don't carry over to the app either). There's no way to watch from a PC, unfortunately.

So there are good reasons for pairing the Recast with one of Amazon's streaming gadgets. Thankfully, the Recast is compatible with every Fire TV streaming player that the company has ever released. Performance was incredibly snappy with the Fire TV Stick 4K, but will likely vary depending on what you've got and how strong your Wi-Fi network is. The mobile app experience could use some serious refinement. It's far from great, but it handles the core task of letting you watch live TV or something from the DVR without issue.

I've been satisfied with the stream quality of the Recast both on the Fire TV and when viewing from my iPhone. Video maxes out at 720p/60 fps, which is about all you need for broadcast content. (The TV interface will tell you when a channel/show is in HD, but the mobile app doesn't.) And the Alexa voice commands — Alexa, tune to NBC; Alexa, record This Is Us; Alexa, how full is my DVR?; Alexa, show me my recordings — are straightforward and helpful. Once you set the Recast up, live TV is something that the Fire TV just gets and knows when to use. I've experienced few pauses or buffering interruptions so far. A lot of that has to do with the way Amazon is trying to be a good citizen on your Wi-Fi network. When using the Recast with a Fire TV, the devices connect over Wi-Fi Direct:

Fire TV Recast creates a hidden Soft Access Point (Soft AP) which aims to avoid congesting the network traffic on your home access point. When used with another Fire TV device, Fire TV Recast uses this less congested SoftAP instead of your home network, which allows for more efficient streaming and reduces the impact to other devices on your home network. This creates a more reliable streaming experiences versus competitor.

That's all well and good, but in terms of the user experience, there's a lot more that Amazon can do beyond the basics. As just one example, DVR'd content can't be saved offline on a mobile device — not even on a Fire tablet. That'd be really nice to see. I'd also love a smarter way of skipping commercials beyond just fast forwarding 30 seconds at a time.

After a few days with the Fire TV Recast, I can say that it works as expected. It's an OTA DVR tailor made for people who are subscribed to Amazon Prime, who already have a Fire TV, and who are very happy with Amazon's ecosystem. If you're among those people, the Recast might be enticing. The question worth asking yourself is whether you like the big four networks enough to spend over $200 for the freedom to watch them anywhere. Personally, I'd still lean towards the existing internet TV services that give me those same channels as part of a bigger bundle that includes cable networks.

But it's easy to see where Amazon is headed with all of this. The margins on an internet TV service are thin. The deals necessary to build one are hard to secure and can fall apart. So instead of creating its own "internet TV" service, Amazon is trying to position itself as your entertainment hub. You can get Prime Video, you can pile on HBO and some other premium options if you want, and now you can get OTA TV. Content owners are destined to start favoring their own services over third-party bundles that they have little control over, and it seems Amazon is unconvinced it can create the one service to rule them all. It's sure good at subscriptions, though.

Apple is reportedly planning to pursue the same strategy as Amazon. Perhaps sensing that Apple is hot on its heels, Amazon can count on the Fire TV Recast as a differentiator when pitted against whatever Apple does with its TV app and third-party "channels" in 2019. Apple might similarly offer subscriptions for channels like Starz or CBS, but you'll likely have to find your own solution for live ABC, CBS, Fox, NBC, and public stations that a lot of people find value in.

The Fire TV Recast is smart product, then. It's fine at what it does right now, and with some evolution through future updates, it could end up being very good.

Photography by Chris Welch.

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The Google Assistant smart home ecosystem is slowly starting to take shape

Posted: 14 Nov 2018 06:00 AM PST

At an event in San Francisco yesterday, Google gave the press a tour of a smart home featuring its Google Assistant products. Notably, the new Google Home Hub was there. It was, in many ways, pretty typical: here's how you can turn on the lights, command a TV to play Stranger Things on Netflix (it's always Stranger Things on Netflix), and start or stop a Roomba. But Google also showed off a handful of new features for both Assistant and its Google Home products.

On their own, none of these new features are particularly revolutionary. Taken together, they certainly don't add up to a compelling case for why somebody who is already enmeshed in Amazon's Alexa ecosystem should switch over. What they did do, however, was begin to present a coherent idea of how Google thinks its Assistant should work in a smart home and across its own products.

The clearest example of that — and the feature I found most interesting — is the integration of Google Assistant Routines into the default Android clock app. Routines are essentially macros for a bunch of stuff you might ask Assistant to do in a row: turn on the lights, tell you the weather, start the coffee maker, and turn on the news. Google's relatively simple move was to allow you to attach one of those routines to an alarm so that when you turn it off, it would automatically trigger your morning routine.

It's the sort of thing you could easily achieve with similar features from Alexa or Siri, but tossing it on the phone's clock app directly is smart. (Google's clock app lets you pick a song on Spotify as your alarm sound, which is also smart.)

Another example: if you have a Google Home product, you may have tried the "broadcast" feature. From any device with Google Assistant on it, you can "broadcast" a message to every speaker in your home. (Think of it as a PA system — and, honestly, treat it like one because it can be kind of annoying.) The new feature is the ability for somebody to reply to one of those broadcasts from a speaker.

Your spoken reply gets sent to the person who sent it as a short voice message that is also transcribed. The person who sent the broadcast can then speak or even just type a reply. It works a little like a walkie-talkie, if you like. The use case Google suggests is broadcasting a request for stuff the family might want from the grocery store. Back home, your kid can reply that you need more juice.

But not every new feature was a sign of Google's growing understanding that it needs to make sure its devices talk to each other and improve each other. Some of these features reveal Google's increasingly partner-based approach to providing content. It's about the deals.

Google is contextually showing recipe suggestions on the Google Home Hub now, depending on the time of day, the season, and, yes, your personal search history. You can save recipes in a cookbook that gets synced across devices, but only recipes that are freely available on the web. Your family recipes still have to sit in a box on your counter. Later on, you'll be able to get recipes from subscription sources.

There's also a partnership with Nickelodeon that expands existing features for the Google Home like bedtime stories. You can also get brand-based alarms out of these smart speakers. So a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle can tell your kid to go brush his teeth. And though brand tie-ups like this might make you cringe as much as me, you should know that there is some demand for more fun content out of these speakers. As Rani Molla reported earlier this week, the third most-used feature on smart speakers is "fun questions."

Let's set aside the kid-friendly "brand synergy" and web-focused recipe feature for a minute, though, and go back to what Google's trying to accomplish in the smart home. What I saw yesterday was the beginning of an ecosystem that works better if you use more than one Google device. Instead of just trying to get you to buy a Home Mini over an Echo Dot, Google is trying to present a more elegant, integrated idea of how its products work.

If you have an Android phone, you'll get to take advantage of routines from your alarm clock, making you more likely to prefer a Google Home. If you have a Google Home Hub, you absolutely are going to want to use Google Photos on your phone to sync your pictures. And if you have any flavor of Google Home, you'll be more likely to want a Pixel phone. Another new option allows you to ask your smart speaker to set your phone to Do Not Disturb.

To be clear, none of this is locked in, not exactly. You can use Google Assistant on an iPhone, and Google Home works well with third-party products like Ring doorbells or Hue bulbs or Roomba. And as long as we're being clear: never underestimate either Google or the smart home's proclivity for letting things become slowly fragmented.

Even so, for maybe the first time, I'm beginning to see how Google has a path to build a "multiplier effect" ecosystem, one where each new Google product you adopt makes the other Google products you own more valuable. It's not nearly enough to unseat Alexa as the default intelligent assistant on a smart speaker, but it might be enough to make an existing Google user think twice about switching.

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Samsung Galaxy S10's chipset? Exynos 9820 unveiled with 20% speed boost, AI chip

Posted: 14 Nov 2018 03:39 AM PST

Samsung has announced the new Exynos 9820, the chipset that will probably power its upcoming flagships like the Galaxy S10, Galaxy Note 10, and possibly its new foldable phone.

The new 8nm process Exynos 9820 succeeds the 10nm Exynos 9810, which powered Galaxy S9 models outside the US while US models ran on Qualcomm's 10nm Snapdragon 845.

Instead of relying on algorithms to enhance on-chip AI processing, Samsung has integrated a dedicated Neural Processing Unit (NPU), bringing it up to par with Huawei's Kirin chips, and Apple's A12 Bionic chips for the iPhone.

Samsung says the new NPU will allow the Exynos 9820 to run AI tasks seven times faster than the Exynos 9810. It should also help deliver improved photography features, such as adjusting camera settings, and faster object recognition.

The octa-core Exynos 9820 consists of a two custom CPU cores, dual Cortex A75 cores, and four Cortex A55 cores.

SEE: Sensor'd enterprise: IoT, ML, and big data (ZDNet special report) | Download the report as a PDF (TechRepublic)

Samsung is touting major single-core and multi-core performance improvements over the Exynos 9810. The fourth-generation custom CPU improves single-core performance by up to 20 percent, while multi-core performance increases by 15 percent.

The 8nm LPP (Low Power Plus) FinFET based Exynos 9820 promises to cut power consumption by up to 10 percent compared with the 10nm LPP Exynos 9810.

The addition of the latest Mali-G76 GPU cores should offer a 40 percent performance boost or 35 percent power savings.

Mobile connectivity is also getting an upgrade with the integrated modern supporting LTE Category 20 and download speeds up to 2Gbps. It also supports uplink speeds of up to 316Mbps.

Samsung expects to begin mass production of the Exynos 9820 by the end of the year.

A new NPU should allow the Exynos 9820 to run AI tasks seven times faster than the Exynos 9810.
Image: Samsung

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