Confused Prospective Shield TV Owner

by almosttan

Hi guys,

So I'm getting married in four months and my fiancée and I recently went over someone's house who had one of those cheap pre-loaded set top boxes running Android OS. We decided that it would be cool to get something like that, but the box was honestly laggy and slow and doesn't check all my boxes.

I spend 99% of my time in /r/Android and am a Nexus fanboy with rooted phones one of which is running Android N.

I am looking at the shield TV because of its fast performance and gaming ability which we aren't big on but we think it will be fun to do as newlyweds while recuperating from wedding and honeymoon costs.

I downloaded Kodi on my Nexus 6p and tried setting up things like 1Channel to use in addition to my paid accounts like HBO Go, GPM, FX, and Netflix. The issue I'm seeing is that even after setting up add-ons and prettier themes, it seems difficult/involves a lot of slow menu diving to get to watch a TV show and my fiancée might hate it. Whereas on the cheap box you'd just hit TV shows and start browsing the catalogue, you have to dive through a bunch of menus slowly on Kodi. Is Kodi this slow on the shield TV? Is there something that can emulate a better UI for Kodi that are wife friendly? I really want the shield TV to work for both of our use cases. And to throw out my gen1 Chromecast. Lol.

Also: any fun games you can reccomend for us as newlyweds? I haven't gamed since MarioKart on SNES. fuck.

Thanks for your guidance!

joeysdad

Lag should not be an issue on the Shield. The rest of the menu diving issue you describe is all Kodi setup and skinning options. If you figure out how your friends cheapie box is skinned and configured you can do the same.

As for newlywed games.. I would recommend 'hide the sausage' and 'find the little man in the canoe'.

Rusty_Squeezebox

Here's my wife-approved Kodi setup for Shield (we have 2): Mimic skin with scrolling widgets for your top movies and shows. Trakt to add your movies and shows, which is even more awesome when you have more than one Shield, since it syncs them for you. Exodus, SALTS and Phoenix add-ons with a Real-debrid account for even better HD sources and more reliable streaming.

pokes135

As a nexus fan myself (rooted and rom'ed on shamu as well of coarse lol), we got the shield tv and despite a few minor bugs it rocks. My reason is I wanted proper hardware to decode ota tv via an HDHomeRun tuner. Both Nexus Player & Fire TV box could not decode the video because they lack the hardware the shield has.

Is this to be your set top box replacement? If so, get the Shield. If not, maybe consider the upcoming Mi box.

As for Kodi, I dropped Kodi for Plex. I got tired of keeping up with broken addons, and switching to the newest 'best' addon, and when Kodi wouldn't load earlier this month (bug?) I just switched to Plex for local media playback. Also not sure of the future of Kodi for android.

infeststation

I was considering selling it for the Apple TV. I don't really use Kodi (see sonar comment below) and had no interest in its gaming capabilities- until i recently connected it through Ethernet. Now, I can stream 4k games from the other room flawlessly. I was using it over wifi before and wasn't impressed with 1080p. It's really, really good if you have a good connection. If you have a gaming PC or want to game on one in the future, the shield is nuts.

NedSc

Don't use shitty streaming add-ons? Kodi itself is a great video player. Download your videos, make a video library, be happy.

lebowskigrande

I love my Shield because of how it pairs Kodi with the official streaming apps for the services you pay for. Kodi streaming addons all suck, buts its perfect for playing local media (i use the eminence skin btw). But for services like Netflix, HBO Go, Hulu, etc, just get the Android TV apps and use them alongside Kodi. Especially if you use Google Play for your content, an Android box makes that easy without messing with Kodi. If a show/movie is on Google Play, the voice search on the remote will pull it up instantly.

BookerTD

You are looking for games to try playing? Hmm if only there was some kind of 'emulator paradise' where tons of old games were hosted, then all you would need are emulators on the device... I've been messing with N64 games recently, they run flawlessly on the Shield