The Amazon Fire TV Recast has nmrous series recording options. They allow you to control which episode sin a series are recorded, how they’re recorded, the quality of the recording, when a recording can be autoatically deleted to make room for new recordings, and more. Here’s a breakdown of all the available options and what each one means.

The Fire TV Recast has several series recording settings that you can configure. Each series can have a different configuration of these settings. You can also configure the settings that are used by default each time you schedule a series to be recorded. Default series recording options can be set under the Fire TV’s Settings > Live TV > Live TV Sources > Fire TV Recast > DVR menu. They can also be set using the Fire TV app on a mobile device under Settings > Fire TV Recast > Default Recording Options.

Recording Extension Buffer

The first two settings under the recording options are labeled as “Start Recording” and “Stop Recording.” These settings allow you set whether you want to start recording exactly when an episode in a series is scheduled to air, or if you want to add a buffer so that extra video is recorded before and/or after the episode. The available buffer quantities are: On Time, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 10, 15, 30, and 60 minutes. You don’t need to set the same buffer the start as you do for the end. Each can be set individually.

This feature is useful to ensure that you don’t miss the start or end of an episode that might begin a little early or run a little late. It comes in handy for sports where there might be unexpected overtime or extra innings that air after the scheduled time for the game. Unfortunately, it’s not possible to set a recording buffer for a single episode, so if you want to set a buffer, you have to set the entire series to be recorded and set the buffer in the series settings.

Deletion Protection

The Fire TV Recast allows you to protect an individual episode so that it will never be deleted, no matter how full the hard drive gets. A protected episode will have a lock icon in the upper right corner of the episode image. In the series settings, you can set the “Protect” option to “Yes” to automatically protect all recordings in that series.

When a series option is set to be protected, all existing recordings of the series are also protected. Likewise, when protection is disabled in the series options, all existing recordings of that series that are set to be protected will be unprotected. This provides an easy way to simultaneously toggle all existing recordings to be protected or unprotected, without needing to set each episode setting individually.

Automatic Deletion

The “Keep At Most” option for a series determines how many of the most recent recordings should be kept. The options available are 5, 15, 20, or all episodes. Even if there is available space, this setting is followed. So, if the setting is set to keep 5 episodes and 5 recordings exist, the oldest recording will be deleted when a new episode is recorded, even if there is room on the hard drive for the new recording and all 5 other recordings.

When the previous “Protect” series option is set to “Yes,” the “Keep At Most” option is disabled, since all episodes will be protected and kept. That said, setting the “Keep At Most” option to “All Episodes” is not equivalent to setting the “Protect” option to “Yes.” If a series is unprotected but set to keep all episodes, the Fire TV Recast will continue to store all new episodes until it runs out of storage space. At that point, when a new recording needs to be stored, it will delete the oldest episode that is unprotected, even if the series is set to keep all episodes. Essentially, settings series to “keep at most all episodes” is like setting it to keep as many as possible, as long as there is free space for new recordings.

Only New Episodes

Next is a series option that is simply labeled “Recording Preference.” This option lets you set a series recording to only record new episodes or all episodes. When set to only record new episodes, the Fire TV Recast will not record rerun episodes that have previously aired. Only episodes that are airing for the first time will be recorded.

When you set a series to be recorded, the Fire TV Recast will record episodes of that series regardless of what channel they air on. It’s, however, smart enough to not record duplicate episodes. This is nice if your goal is to accumulate as many episodes of a series as possible, but if you only want first-run episodes from a show’s main channel, setting this option to “New episodes” will achieve that result.

Quality Preference

Lastly, the Fire TV Recast has an “Image Quality” setting that is fairly self-explanatory. This option allows you to set whether you only want HD recordings of a series, only SD recordings, or if you prefer one over the other but are fine with both, or if you have no preference.

I’m not sure if the Fire TV Recast is smart enough to replace an existing SD recording of a particular episode with a newer HD version that airs in the future. As previously mentioned, the Fire TV Recast normally will not record a duplicate episode, but replacing an SD recording with an HD recording, or even storing both versions, is one instance where you might not want it to ignore a duplicate airing.