Selfishly a little bit, we built Shield for ourselves."
I never understood what the shield does or what its for
The only important thing to know is that it is, and has been for many years, the most powerful Android TV box you can buy. So no lagging or stuttering. It also has image upscaling that works pretty well.
Whats an android tv box? What does it do?
My smart tv doesn’t run android, it runs a proprietary Sony OS.
With my shield, I can run anything android can run like smart tube, jellyfin, Plex, emulation station, steam in home streaming etc.
This is why android tv boxes exist. Your tv is probably pretty underpowered or doesn’t even run android, this solves those issues to enable you to run pretty much anything you want on your tv.
Uhhh it’s a streaming TV box that runs like Netflix, Paramount, Apple TV, etc. on Android TV OS?
So it makes a not smart tv smart?
Or can make dumb a smart tv that’s tracking all your content viewing by unplugging it from the network and then running this on your own. Or a hotel TV when traveling.
Isnt it a bit naive to think all that information isnt going to nvidia instead?
Mozilla reviewed Nvidia’s privacy policies and user agreements. It’s their second most private rated streaming device after AppleTV.
https://www.mozillafoundation.org/en/privacynotincluded/nvidia-shield-tv/
Yes, or you can use it in lieu of your “Smart TV” as to prevent data collection and other shitty things, while not having to deal with stutter/lag/crashing.
This is exactly where I am in wanting a shield, but it feels crazy to buy it for $200 when it’s over 10 years old. Maybe I’ll just use my PS5 instead… It’s been used a lot less since I built my PC last year.
it feels crazy to buy it for $200 when it’s over 10 years old.
there is nothing newer that works better, that’s the entire point of this article.
I think the Walmart ONN ones are also a good value, fairly powerful, and free of malware (or were at some point).
Now give me a new one with updated standards and specs.
AV1 support would be nice
Article alludes to it. The hope is real
And yet nobody I’ve ever known plays this thing or even cares about it’s existence lol.
Yeah, no. This is definitely a Reddit thing. Folks don’t actually own these in the capacity that reddit would have you believe.
It exists. Some folks game on it. They are the minority of a minority, unfortunately. I’ll be laughed out of the room but in my experience, these things are super niche. Perhaps your experience differs and every other buddy you have owns one.
Not around here lol.
we built Shield for ourselves
Obviously. Had they built it for consumers, they’d stop supporting it after a year or two.
And they had CEO buy in. And that’s probably mostly due to the valuation / profit margin going bananas
Yeah, you can kind of tell, I think Chromecast Audios are the same thing.
Either one of the Google founders / board members still use them and love them and won’t let the company discontinue them, or one of the original engineers / PMs has risen up to the point where they can keep allocating support budget to it.
Those still work? Time to dig in the wire bin.
Yup, and they’re still hard to find a reasonable priced replacement for, so still go for like double their original price on marketplace.
The only downside to them is that they struggle a little bit to playback lossless audio. So you can’t play Spotify lossless off them and I found that they would occasionally crash when streaming Tidal / Quobuz lossless. I’m pretty sure this is just a thermal constraint though and you can fix it by taking off their case (some people even add heatsinks to them).
But they still can’t fix CEC
I bought the 2019 one and ended up selling it for this reason.
Have never had CEC compatibility issues with anything else. I’ve rotated through Samsung and TCL TVs, Roku Boxes, Google TV Boxes, Chromecasts, Switches, Xboxes, Yamaha and Denon Amps, and Vizio Sound Bars, but the only showstopping CEC issue I’ve ever had was with the shield.
Works fine for me? What problems do you experience?
Same. I have the tube one, so maybe the original is different and has problems?
Doesn’t work at all on my LG tv, tried to configure it countless times but the only thing that actually works is IR. Got any ideas?
I do have the shield pro.
It’s almost certainly the cec implementation on the TV itself.
What on earth are you basing that on?
Facts mostly
Do you have your LG set to power saving mode? That usually turns off its ability to be woken up.
It’s been everything I needed it to be in a streaming box, performance and software-wise. I’ve had one first-gen die and get replaced. Replacement box eventually had a fan bearing go bad. I asked Nvidia if they could sell me a replacement fan and they RMA’d the whole unit, even outside warranty, IIRC. I eventually ended up buying the second gen, and I haven’t had a problem with that one yet, aside from the remote buttons getting crumbs in them and there’s no way to disassemble the remote to clean it out.
"Nvidia, fuck you! "
I need to buy another box. Is there even anything better than the shield out at the moment?
Replacing a shitty Chromecast that shits the bed with jellyfin and h265… Currently considering the tube shield.
Get the pro. Its worth it
Probably a mini-PC or SBC like a Raspberry Pi to be honest.
Running what OS? There isn’t an alternative to android and it’s a huge problem
You can run LineageOS with a specific AndroidTV version on a Raspberry Pi.
It largely depends on how you want to control it. If you’re fine with using a mouse and keyboard, even some sort of tiny little Bluetooth combo that uses a track pad or gyro mouse, then that opens up tons of Linux distros.
There are also Linux distros like Ubuntu for TV that can work with a remote.
Currently I have a Shield, but when the day comes to replace it I’ll probably use a mini-PC and I expect to be using SteamOS at that point, mostly using a controller, as long as I can find a good way to add streaming apps to my steam library on it.
Would be cool to see an update. Have an AV1 decoder with all the bells and whistles. So far satisfied with the ONN box but would consider a Shield 2 for the prospect of video game emulation that’s progressed in the last 10 years on Android
The shield is a modern marvel for the level of support it has received
Not a marvel when the SoC is also owned by them. Them, Apple, and (outside the US) Samsung are the only ones who could really pull it off without help.
Google designs their own chips too. Theoretically they could too
