This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
It's my birthday, and I want the upscaling, the single platform, the flexibility (sailing the high seas), but it's soooo old. $200? IDK
Honestly, for running jellyfin/emby/plex, there's nothing better. The only thing an update might get you would be higher refresh rates or maybe 8k support, but for watching video, who cares?
Once I disabled the built-in "leanback" launcher with its fucking toxic ads and replaced it with flauncher, it's been essentially perfect for watching media. flauncher is fugly as hell but it stays out of my face, unlike google's ad-focused launcher.
AV1 is missing from the current shield and would be great to have as part of an updated model.
HLG, AV1, QMS, VP9 Profile 2 (YouTube HDR) and faster menus would make me want to upgrade from my 2017 Shield as that'd improve watching videos.
Ikr..I wish shield had an app only mode like the new Chromecast has.
I run Moonlight, SmartTube, Jellyfin, and Stremio on mine and it's a beast.
Honestly, for running jellyfin/emby/plex, there's nothing better.
I'm currently running Kodi on my Xbox with Jellycon to stream from a Jellyfin server.
I'd be genuinely curious how this is better.
Thank you so much for the FLauncher tip! I like it much more than the default Home Screen
Nvidia has all but backed out of the mobile chip market, and those chips are what this line used. So that's why we haven't seen any updates in years. But the good news is they have made a new chip for Nintendo's next-gen switch coming out sometime next year. So within a year of that coming out, I would expect to finally see a new Shield or Nvidia TV or whatever they call it, using a similar chip to what goes in the Switch 2
Switch 2 launch: we heard you all say you wanted better battery life, so we delivered, 3x the battery life for the same performance! Get your switch 2 today, all switch games will work on switch 1 or 2!
Honestly that wouldn't be the worst thing in the world.
Not the worst, but I'd like the ability to have consistent 30fps across the board for all titles if we're going for 2x the battery life. 60fps for the same battery life would be even better!
Happy birthday :)
Thank you!
AI upscale is not worth it in my opinion unless you watch old blueray rips since compression algorithms would make upscaling worse in some cases.
I have Apple tv and linux pc for my 2 tvs.
If Apple tv cover your needs then go for it. I got it used in 2017 (I believe gen 3) and still butter smooth to this day.
I strongly disagree. The AI upscaling is incredibly practical. I have a 4k TV, and most 1080p shows and movies look insanely sharp. It's not a gimmick.
This said, I don't think anyone should buy these new right now. They need to release an update.
Don't go with Apple TV, just buy a fire stick for next to nothing and wait for the next shield. That, or buy used.
I'm just waiting for the EU to force Apple to be open, then I'll move to everything Apple, maybe.
Hopefully they will. I was bummed when I knew that apple tv has no vpn functionality.
I bought the Nokia 8010 TV box instead of the shield. I do not know if it's available in your country. Why? Cheaper and same ish enough.
I like it but "like" is all there is. I do not love it. As most android boxes it is not 100% stable and needs a reboot after a week or so.
I red in several forums the nvidia shield has the same problem.
Tbh the appletv is the wise choice. Stable, more apps, better ecosystem, better soc, more storage. Plex also works on it.
I couldn't use it unfortunately because my Atmos setup is not arc 2.0 and the appletv only does uncompressed atmos. With arc 1.x it's only possible to send atmos compressed over dolby digital plus.
I second this, I love my Apple TV. Blazingly fast and stable and the extra features are amazing. Bought a new sound bar the other day, held my iPhone up and it perfectly configured audio latency. The TV itself had trouble communicating with the sound bar over CEC so I told the Apple TV to learn the volume controls from the sound bar remote, took 10 seconds. When I got my TV, the AppleTV used the camera on my phone to configure the picture settings for most accurate colour reproduction. Added a couple notches of saturation because it’s my personal preference, done.
It plays everything I’ve thrown at it via Plex and Jellyfin, no issues. I also have Moonlight for streaming games from my PC via NVidia game stream and Steam Link for whenever Gamestream shits the bed. Just paired up an Xbox controller to the Apple TV, job done.
Oh, and TV OS 17 just came out and added third party VPN support, so if you do have Netflix or whatever, you can change region using a VPN.
I’m not an Apple fan boy but the Apple TV just works and if you already have a modern-ish iPhone (mine’s a 12), it makes it so much better.
Do you have a solution for running movies of off USB or similar with the Apple TV? I sometimes download movies or shows and I don’t want to deal with streaming them from the pc using plex as I always worry that I’m not getting the best quality. I usually plug a usb stick to my smart tv but sometimes it doesn’t pick up on the subtitles.
It’s literally all that is missing from Apple TV for me (plus the VPN thing that was missing). To be able to run media from an external storage.
I have the OG Shield Pro, with an additional remote, the most recebt one.
Besides changing the inner HDD for a SSD, it does all I need.
Sure, it doesn't support the HDMI 2.1 that my TV does, but I don't need that for what the Shield does for me (YouTube, Netflix and Plex playback).
I have one and it is pretty amazing, but it sucks for Kodi from time to time, usually a reboot fixes all the annoyances... But I don't like that workaround.
My unit was downgraded to 8.2.3 and debloated for the sake of a better performance.
on the flip side, i also dowgraded to 8.2.3 and debloated. i have zero issues with Kodi using PKC with direct play over a wired connection.
In my experience the WiFi modem in this thing is shit.
Agreed. I have a Google node literally right next to it and it still drops the sig.
Imo, it'll take 1-3 more birthdays until a new one comes out. Is there anything specific you'd want them to upgrade? The only clear thing they're missing right now is av1 support. Given that it's still the best player on the market, I'd say go ahead and get it. Maybe try to find one second hand to save a buck, that's what I did earlier this year 🙂.
Nvidia has pretty much dropped this. I don't forsee another version in the next three years. I don't see anything you listed that wouldn't be a good reason to go for the regular shield though and save some money. It's still a good product. I would buy now.
I love my shield, so while ot is rather expensive and it seems like there won't be future models, I still would have bought it.
I am using a Chromecast 4k and I am quite happy with it .. what would the shield accomplish better ?
Better app performance, better upscaling, game streaming (though you'll need to use something like Moonlight for local streaming now), better audio format support for local Plex/Jellyfin servers.
IMO nothing beats the Nvidia TV and I've tried just about everything. Heck, I'm still rocking a 2017 on my main TV (lacks Dolby Vision/Atmos and AI Upscaling but is otherwise fine).
The non-Pro seems to have issues that affect 4k decoding in plex but never seen similar issues on a Pro (I think packing the internals into that small tube was a mistake, and it's overheating, but that's just a guess).
There's some hope Nvidia will come out with a next gen but people have been hoping (and spreading rumours about) that for years.. until there's an official announcement I wouldn't expect it. They continue to support software upgrades though.
The only reason I think they might soon if at all is because the Nintendo Switch and the shield have similar SoCs. Tegra X1 with a Maxwell GPU. Well Switch 2 is close enough to release that people are seeing it and the SoC is showing up in benchmarks. Another ARM chip, but with an Ampere GPU this time.
So if NVidia is already building the SoC for Nintendo, it may be reasonably easy to make an upgrade to the Shield.
I sold mine due to video stuttering that I couldn’t fix, I bought fire cube instead.
They fixed that on the latest models. They actually got a LOT better over time after multiple updates.
I have the tube, so it's not even the pro, and it plays everything... Even crazy huge 4k streams.
Look for one used. They tend to pop up fairly regularly around here
