Nvidia Shield

Home Theatre
1

After using a chromecast tv for many years (8?) it’s time for an upgrade and I found a deal for the Nvidia shield tv at 124 euros. Bought it and tomorrow I’ll install it if I’ve a bit time.

For us it’s most important to just stream from the Netflix and Disney plus apps and I’ve been told that works on the Nvidia shield tv.

Also, I like the idea of not having an external powersupply but just a power chord into the device. Power & utp in, hdmi out.

Looking forward to it!

2 Likes
2

We got a Fire TV Stick this week!

3

I’ve an Amazon Fire Stick, a Fire 4K box, and an nVidia Shield Pro.

The nVidia Shield is simply leagues ahead of my Fire devices and the video quality, especially redering older 480p content (something other devices really struggle with reconstructing convincingly) is simply astounding.

I borrowed several Blu-ray players with network support and the Shield blew them all away. You won’t be disappointed.

One bit of advice, it’s more stable on wifi than wired LAN. It’s a known issue with the default Android network driver that was designed to be wifi only originally and nVidia didn’t rewrite it. But I stream uncompressed Blu-ray rips at 4K with ATMOS in Dolby TrueHD and it’s never once glitched out on wifi.

2 Likes
4

It has arrived, I’m going to test it tonight. Our tv is pretty good in upsampling standard quality from Netflix.

I do have a full Cisco network and the AP is in the same room so I’ll check WiFi vs wired too. The current old chromecast is wired to utp via a power adapter with Ethernet and that frankly the only way to get it working well but that’s an old device.

5

Wired works perfectly fine for about 2 weeks. Then the connection vanishing and apps won’t connect unless they are already running in the background. Once it gets into that state, only a factory reset will get wired working again. It is a known issue. My advice, just stick with wifi.

The upscaling on the Shield is nothing short of incredible. Though with older 480p content, turning AI upscaling off and selecting “Basic” will yield better framerate results. But for 720p onward into 4K, it’s like it “knows” what details were supposed to be there. Really something.

2 Likes
6

I’ve only heard extremely good things about the Shield.

1 Like
7

Another Shield user here and as everyone else has said it’s a brilliant bit of kit and knocks spots of even a 4K Fire Stick, yes it’s more expensive but as with most things you get what you pay for.

1 Like
8

I have a firestick 4k Max and I think it is a great bit of kit for the money. What makes a Shield so much better?

1 Like
9

For me it’s the Sheilds ability to upscale any 1080p stream into full 4K picture quality that coupled with the picture enhancement sets it apart as far as I’m concerned, but as they say each to their own.

1 Like
10

I have a ShieldPro and was really surprised at the audio improvement over my Roku Ultra on initial startup. That device is now collecting dust.

I’ve been unlucky, however, with lots of glitches and freezing. Nvidia sent a second one that has the same problems.
I wonder if it’s this Ethernet connection issue that others are referring to. I will try switching to wifi.

I was also unable to login to Disney+. When I contacted Disney support they told me the shield pro is not a supported device and recommended I watch tv on my phone…

1 Like
11

Probably for Netflix etc. both are fine, though my Shield presents noticibly better picture quality than my my Fire 4K on even the same 4K stream. Subtle gradients and so on are totally smooth on the Shield but somewhat artificial on the Fire.

The Tegra chip in the Shield is a serious bit of video processing muscle and lets the Shield outperform some very high end Blu-Ray players for image quality.

But where the difference opens up to a wide chasm is local streaming of uncompressed content. I have a library of over 1000 DVDs and Blu-Rays all ripped to MKV.

  • Old 480p content from ripped DVD is unwatchable on the Fire. It just struggles to reconstruct a convincing image from the low resolution low bitrate stream and the result is blocky, pixelated and crawling with stray segments.
  • On the Shield, the same 480p content is rendered upscaled so well, while it clearly isn’t as sharp as a 4K Blu-Ray, it’s close to a standard 1080p disc. You’d never consider replacing a single DVD, put it that way.
  • 1080p content from ripped Blu-Ray presents a challenge at times for the Fire to keep up with. If a Dolby Digital audio track is selected it will be fine but if a 7.1 channel HD track is selected, the Fire may stutter once or twice during playback.
  • The Fire 4K can’t actually cope with the data rate on a 4K Blu-Ray rip at all. It presents 3 seconds as paused buffering (or rendering - it’s not clear what it’s doing beyond struggling) for every 1 or 2 seconds of playback. I have to throttle the stream (and therefore the quality) on the Plex server to get a Fire 4K to play it back.

So really for online streaming, both are fine and both do 4K, though the Shield produces an image on par with seriously expensive disc players, the Fire is still good. And I still have two Fires in use in other rooms. But if you are building a home cinema with a large local library on a NAS, really the Shield has no streaming peer. The nVidia Tegra chip, old as it may be, pretty much wipes the floor with other streaming boxes like Fire and AppleTV. For this reason, little foibles like problems with wired LAN and some tricky trial and error to get the right combination of video settings on the Shield and Plex client app are soon forgotten.

2 Likes
12

That’s probably the AI-enhanced upscaling at work.

Another happy NVIDIA Shield TV Pro user here.

1 Like
13

Thanks @Ardbeg10y for the heads-up from you and the other posters here that have the nVidia. I was looking at getting a Firestik, but after reading some reviews just now, I believe the nVidia is more what I need.
Mostly just Netflix, Prime, and Disney+.

1 Like
14

I’m sure either would be fine for online streaming. I’d probably go the Fire route if the TV is under 50" and there is no local HD video streaming and the nVidia route if either of those is not the case. I am happy with my Fire devices in the other rooms with less critical viewing. Over 50" and the nVidia’s superior processing really starts to become apparent.

2 Likes
15

We currently have a 65 inch Samsung LED. When we move house we will probably get a 75-80 inch OLED, so the nVidia is probably worth it.
Thanks for the detailed info.

1 Like
16

Apple TV works well as a hub, both sound and pitcher quality is very good.

2 Likes
17

Wifi is indeed good sofar. It starts nearly immediately when watching a movie.

The image quality is excellent for our low quality netflix account (why use 4k if upscaling is near perfect). What I did not expect is the improvement in sound quality which was immediately obvious. Its like a source or pre-amp upgrade. You’d expect bits-are-bits but then it works out differently :slight_smile:

We have a Fire stick too which is fine really but this feels a nudge up indeed.

18

If you are suffering poor sound quality on Netflix, particularly dialogue, I have a tip which may help. Once you start playing a programme go to ‘other’ settings at the bottom of the screen. You should see audio options on the right hand side. Unless you have a 5.1 setup, switch from English 5.1 to English stereo. It’s either called stereo, 2.0 or normal.

You’ll find the dialogue is instantly and dramatically improved!!! Nearly all their programmes are automatically shown in 5.1.

19

IMG_3220
IMG_32204032×3024 3.09 MB

There is a small difference but not worth the euro 10 a month.

2 Likes
20

I pay for “premium 4K” for Dolby Atmos. with or without 4K doesn’t bother me so much.

1 Like