I think the java doc of the setStartFromTimestamp method has been explained very clearly, posted here:
/**
* Specify the consumer to start reading partitions from a specified timestamp.
* The specified timestamp must be before the current timestamp.
* This lets the consumer ignore any committed group offsets in Zookeeper / Kafka brokers.
*
* <p>The consumer will look up the earliest offset whose timestamp is greater than or equal
* to the specific timestamp from Kafka. If there's no such offset, the consumer will use the
* latest offset to read data from kafka.
*
* <p>This method does not affect where partitions are read from when the consumer is restored
* from a checkpoint or savepoint. When the consumer is restored from a checkpoint or
* savepoint, only the offsets in the restored state will be used.
*
* @param startupOffsetsTimestamp timestamp for the startup offsets, as milliseconds from epoch.
*
* @return The consumer object, to allow function chaining.
*/
Thanks, vino.