Does the shield hold up?

by BristolBomber

With the shield down at 149 Pounds (UK.. yea we get screwed)

I'm considering picking one up for our house move in which we will have a second living room.

We currently stream media from Plex on a NUC and i have steamlink in the living room also. So this would be used for both media and light gaming.

It would also possibly be used for IPTV.

My concern would be support moving forward on the older hardware.. i dont want to buy a really expensive android box only for it to be worthless this time next year or the near future.

GreatScottTX

Yes, light years better than anything else.

BiggussDikkuss

The future is DolbyVision, HDR10+ HLG, and Dolby Audio licenced devices that output the correct color, using colorspace switching for both SDR and HDR. Dolby Atmos too.

Most of the features you see on the recently released Fire TV Stick 4K and the Apple TV 4K.

Only the Shield will give you Bluray Rips quality Atmos passthrough Audio:

https://forum.kodi.tv/showthread.php?tid=332180

But if you want light gaming & steamlink, how many media players do that ?

Yes Tech moves pretty fast these days with each hardware release from major media tech companies leapfrogging the other.

ProgrammerPlus

It will, because NVIDIA has been updating it regularly so far.

It may not, because no one can see the future.

JimboLodisC

The SoC is from 2015 but it still mops the floor with anything currently on the market. If anything you should have got one years ago.

yourm0m1

Had mine for years and it's the best media center device I've owned and still use.

M00lers

So does Kodi on Shield switch output automatically depending on the source video. Will Blu-ray rips output 24hz and then if I watch IPTV from UK switch to 50hz....my cheap Libreelec box does and it my favourite thing about the device.

BiggussDikkuss

An important point you may not have considered....

UK & Euro sourced IPTV will be either 25/50fps. So you will want to use a Android system display output of 50Hz to Sync properly.

You can use Apps like Plex, Kodi, MrMC only that do auto refresh switching to match source video frame rates to the TV. Use those Apps and you will be fine.

But then what happens for Apps like 24p Netflix & Prime video, that do not do Android TV - refresh switching ?

24p output at 50Hz really is a bit of a video playback juddery mess. You would have to manually switch Android settings Hz output each and every time you want to watch such 24p content with those sort of Apps.

If you use 23.976 as a display output, the user interface is a slow sloppy mug of a thing.

Not the sort of performance you want on a 149 Pound device.

Most users on here living in North America do not have to consider such Frame rate issues because their TV is 29.97 / 59.94fps.

I live in a territory that has to deal with 25/50fps and Android TV devices simply do not work that well when you factor in IPTV and 24p Netflix and Prime Video. I hate manually switching output Hz and hate video playback judder.