Don't get me wrong. I've been pro Android since 2008, and I still like it compared to IOS, Windows, ETC... When it works.

So today I get an email from Nvidia saying I have a .99 cent movie rental through Google Play Movies. Cool I'll pick something out with my daughter and we will watch it before bed. So we pick a movie, click on rent, click on HD, and get an error message. Ok I thought, I'll restart the Shield and it'll work. Come back and try after rebooting and get the same error. Look the error up on Google and most people are saying it was because they had no payment options set up. I had 2 credit cards and paypal setup for payment options, so I decided that wasn't it. Grab my trusty Nexus 6P and try to rent the movie from there... Get a different error, okay time to try out the live help feature in Android. Moments later I was connected with a customer service rep. After an hour of trouble shooting with the rep we got nowhere. I had uninstalled and reinstalled apps, cleared caches, cleared data, removed all payment methods and put them back in. At this point we got rid of one error but started getting a different error. Then we got to where we could rent some movies, but not others. Eventually after almost 2hrs of wasting my Friday night dicking with the Shield instead of spending time with my daughter I gave up and decided to cast the movie from my phone from an alternate source... Well it was a good idea on paper. I select the Shield to cast to and all that happens is the blank cast screen comes up, nothing ever plays. That's odd because I cast things to my Nexus Player all the time with no issues.

At this point my daughter decided she just wanted to lay down in bed and watch something as she was getting tired. Hooray! Netflix loads like a champ and she has a show playing without a hitch. About 5 mins later she calls for me. Randomly netflix closed, no force close message or anything, it just went away. So I lay down and start Netflix again, this time I hang out and sure enough about 5 mins into the show it just goes back to the home screen. Reboot the NP and now it is working.

This is typical of my experience with Android TV. I have 2 Nexus Players and a Shield TV, all of them are problematic and require some tinkering at least once a week. Tonight was just terrible though. And even after all the frustration and time wasted with tech support, never once did they at least offer me a free rental or anything like that.

I have 2 Android tablets and my phone that also have little random software gremlins. This OS is almost 10 years old IMO it still feels Beta. Every year Google has all these new features and tweaks the promise better battery life and a more stable experience. I feel like every year they give us an OS with some band aids to cover the previous years problems and some new features that might or might not work correctly.