Yay, day 2 and a second issue with the Shield Android TV! My free remote (Christmas promo) arrived today, since pairing it the Shield will go back to the home screen intermittently. Whatever was playing can easily be restarted, may be 5min, may be 2 hours between incidents.
It appears it's as simple as the remote sending the home button command without any interaction. I proved this to myself by having only the remote paired (controller unpaired) moving my selection down and over a few columns on the launcher, coming back 20min later selection is now top left. The only single button that would produce this result is the home button.
Some searching revealed this thread: https://forums.geforce.com/default/topic/900059/shield-android-tv/shield-remote-bug/
It appears this person has an identical issue.
My Shield TV experience is definitely not going well so far. I keep hoping these glitches will be simple fixes and I can go on enjoying my new streamer.
I plan on also contacting Nvidia on this issue, in the mean time I was wondering if anyone else has come across this issue.
Edit: Another thread on Geforce forums with same concerns
Ha this is kinda funny considering I'm sending my shield back because the home button doesn't work. I'm going to swap it for a new one tomorrow so hopefully this one won't have any problems