The new Fire TV interface is a bit more minimalistic when it comes to its navigation menu. While that results in a cleaner and more appealing aesthetic, it also comes with the consequence of burying aspects of the Fire TV under multiple menu layers. The people hurt most by this are Fire TV Recast owners who went from having a “DVR” tab in the navigation menu of the old interface to having to dig several layers into the new interface to find their recordings. To help those Fire TV Recast owners that are still lost, here is where to find your recordings, settings, and OTA channels.
DVR Recordings
The below steps show you how to get to your list of DVR Recordings, which used to be the second row of the old DVR tab.
- Select “Find” from the main navigation menu.
- Go down and select the “Library” item.
- Scroll down past the watchlist and you’ll find your a “DVR Recordings” row.
- Just as before, your latest 10 shows/recordings will be in this row and at the end of the row is an icon that takes you to a grid view of all of your recorded content.
Live “On Now” OTA Channels
The below steps show you how to get to the list of “On Now” OTA channels, which used to be the first row of the old DVR tab.
- Select “Live” from the main navigation menu.
- Scroll down a few rows to find the “Fire TV Recast” row. This row is the closest thing to the “On Now” row that was at the top of the DVR tab in the old Fire TV interface.
Channel Guide
This is the quickest way to get to the channel guide grid, which used to be found at the bottom of the DVR tab in the old Fire TV interface.
- Select “Live” from the main navigation menu.
- Scroll all the way to the bottom, by holding down the DOWN button on your remote, to find the “Guide” button.
DVR Settings
The below steps show you how to get to your DVR settings, which used to be at the bottom of the old DVR tab.
- Select “Find” from the main navigation menu.
- Go down and select the “Library” item.
- Scroll down past the watchlist and DVR recordings and you’ll find your a “DVR Manager” row.
Fire TV Recast Settings
This is where your more advanced Fire TV Recast options are, like adding external storage, default recording options, or deleting all recordings.
- Select the settings gear icon at the end of the main navigation menu.
- Select the “Live TV” settings menu.
- Select the “Sync Sources” item. (Yes, this is a stupid place to burry these settings and I don’t blame you for having trouble finding them.)
- Select the “Fire TV Recast” item.
- Here you will find the advacned options for the Fire TV Recast, which Amazon has evidentaly forgotten to update to the new interface asthetic.
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I have an issue with the new interface where my screen will go to sleep/turn black while watching Twitch. It will stay black until I hit a button to wake it up.
Sucks.
finding the new recast dvr stuff was bad enough, but not horrible.
changing the remote button functions for ff, rw and skip this… that was just unnecessary
Any idea how to view previous or recall last channel when watching live tv on the recast in the new interface. Previously, when watching a channel you could press the down button to bring up a list of previously viewed channels. That feature has now been replaced with advancing to the next live channel in your channel guide.
Hard to believe Amazon—You buy into their Recast dvr, they screw up the software for it by burying the controls. I did figure out a workaround—if you have an echo you can say “recordings” and the dvr will come up on the tv.
Hate the new UI forced on us :(. Cluttered with sponsored stuff, ads, busy, etc. Finally went Wolf launcher.
Is there still anywhere to access the most recently watched Recast programs? If I’m watching something recorded not so recently it used to show up somewhere in a list on the home screen or the DVR screen. It’s a pain to have to navigate back to the page with all recordings and re-find the program and then the episode again, especially if I’d paused it but didn’t come back before the firestick timed out.
Then the new interface no longer shows my progress of how far I’ve watched the episodes themselves in the list, so it’s not always easy to figure out where I was before.
The 3rd or 4th row on the Home screen is where the “Recent” row is now. I haven’t checked for sure that DVR stuff still shows up there, but I assume it does.
Thank you! I found it in about the 6th row down. I either missed it before (it takes a while to change from a row of blank boxes) or it wasn’t originally showing my Recast content after the update. This was really helpful.
Sadly Amazon dropped the ball on the new UI for Recast owners. We put together this video on the DVR changes to make it easier for our customers. https://youtu.be/xbmHBFK9TDw
The quickest way to get to DVR recordings is to use voice remote and say “DVR”. Channel surfing is also an upgrade. Details on FF and REW too.
Great video! Thanks for posting it!
Absolute Crap. DVR was on main screen so very quick to get to but now buried layers down. Amazon is full of inexperienced people who dont understand the word convenience esoecially for customers who not only pay for Amazon Prime and Firesticks, but the high dollar cost of their DVR and this is how they treat us buried layers deep in screens!!
Why make it so hard to find when it was so easy before?
Now, where is the WATCH LIST
This totally stinks. My gut is that the Recast might go away. My concern from the beginning was how long they would have it around. I was an early adopter and as long as it continues to work. I will continue to use it. But my gut is that Amazon has not had a lot of success with it and there is no reoccurring revenue associated with it. So it is just a time/money sink for them now. So they are making it harder to use it. Just my 2 cents
Great news for Recast owners – my Fire Stick Lite must have updated in the last couple hours while it was left online, and there are now progress bars on the episodes so you can see which you’ve watched and how far you are in each episode. They also added the missing time code on the progress bar during a program.
I really thought we were getting abandoned in all the new interface changes and menu relocations, but I’m relieved that they fixed these issues.
It took me a lot of wasted time to finally dig deep enough to find out that with the new and stupid updates that my recast recordings are under find and then go to library instead of calling it what it is like a DVR. What a bunch of COCONUTS. Your Coders are total idiots.
Where do we find the episode title for a live tv program on the new FireTV recast menu.
The old interface provided it. The new interface only shows the program name and network
Where do I find the title of that individual episode. Which was available on the previous user interface? For those of us that watch classic tv, an episode title allows us to research the year and various actors etc on IMDB.
THANKS
I am unable to manage and accurately delete recorded content on the new fire TV recast software far as I’m concerned this is a bait and switch I paid a lot of money for that recast and now it doesn’t function because of their bad software
Suddenly both of my local PBS channels are missing from the Guide (from my antenna) Have done scans for channels, doesn’t work. How can I add them back??
Thanks for nothing, Amazon.
We spend money on your Recast device and then your new UI makes it even harder to use.
Thanks to aftvnews for their article telling us how to use the new UI with a recast. I sure didn’t find any documentation on Amazon about it. I’ve printed out the article to use as I learn again how to use something I already knew how to use.
While evaluating cord-cutting, I purchased a Silicon Dust 2-Channel OTA receiver – before the recast was introduced. Their DVR feature, combined with storage on one of my NAS boxes, is now my primary way of recording OTA. And they have desktop apps for PC& Mac.
How about making a good, unified recast app for all of your Fire TV devices?
Of ALL the Amazon devices I’ve bought, the recast is the worst. When it first came out, it was the most difficult DVR I’ve EVER used. They’ve succeeded in making it even worse.
Most of the time, I forget that thing is even there. I keep getting notifications that it is out of storage so it’s going to delete a program and then I try to use it again. It’s SOO difficult to get around, I just give up.
Today – I’m just unplugging the thing. I’m giving up until I can find some way to jailbreak it and put a REAL DVR on it.
I just got the new firestick and I can’t my shows I recorded