NVIDIA Shield for Playing My Videos

by slatecitylights

I've been trying to find a reasonable response, but a lot has been about apps and gaming. I've got a WDTV box and a semi-dumb TV with some USB ports, but there are connectivity issues intermittently between all of these devices which are a few years old.

I've recently been thinking about picking up a Shield TV for playing videos on my home wifi network (streamed from my desktop) and/or videos from a USB external hard drive. What apps would do this? Should I just wait for more VLC support?

Thanks for the help... and sorry if this gets asked a fair amount.

Andrroid

Plex or SPMC. The former will require a server to run on another device (like your computer). The latter can do local playback itself and can either access files from USB or a network drive.

JimboLodisC

It sounds like you want media center software like Kodi or Plex .

DelSolMan

I do this. Kodi is the way to go.

I recommend finding a cheaper android device if all you do is play videos. You don't need all that Shield power unless you're doing crazy 4K stuff. If you have an old android phone kicking around, you might want to get an HDMI cable (if supported) and just recycle that device.

Kodi works on a laptop as well so if you have an old one kicking around, you can do the same thing.

Elasion

In terms of local play back (From external hard drive) the name of the game is Kodi. Archos is great for simple movie/tv show library, but it's currently broken.

Kodi will work great. If you want it streamed do Plex.

(The reason I got my Sheild over atv4 was the USB port for media playbavk, and I'm hard in the Apple ecosystem)

pandabonanzas

It's awful. I'm in exactly the same place you are. I want to play video. I'm currently using a wdtv, which is limited to .264 mkvs.

The Shield Tv just sucks from a usability standpoint. People talk all this great shit about Kodi, but they apparently have never had a wdtv and don't understand how simple it is to use.

Simply pausing playback in Kodi requires several button presses using the nvidia remote. Then serveral more to restart and remove the overlay. Turning off the Shield TV requires going through multiple button presses then giving it a final ok. It's just absurd.

I'm currently looking at the Vero 2. https://osmc.tv/vero/

I'm almost certainly going to send the Shield tv back. It's a device that wants to do everything, and it's certainly not doing the one thing I want it to do very well at all.

edit: already downvoted by people who don't understand that usability is critically important.

I'll try pairing the shield with a different (type) remote.