I'm currently looking for a TV box that supports Dolby Atmos/Vision and has USB ports for expandable storage. I'm not going to be using any streaming services, I just want to load movies onto its storage and watch them through VLC media player. I was looking into Nvidia Shield TV and I liked it a lot, but the lack of USB port is pretty much a deal-breaker. SDHC is absolutely awful for this application, not only am I going to pay double for half the storage size I can get with HDD, it's also going to die much faster since I'll be writing and erasing data all the time. Nvidia shield tv pro seems to tick all of the boxes, but it seems like a bit of an overkill — I'm definitely not going to use it for any gaming. Any suggestions?
The Shield may seem like overkill but otherwise you will have to research the many Chinese boxes to see which have your requirements. No mainstream device is going to cover it. Just because you don't game is no reason not to get what is also the most capable local media player. That's what started me with the Shield, media playback. I haven't done a lot of gaming on them. In fact I almost never played any games before getting my first one 4 years ago. It's still the best money I have spent on any device. So don't let the gaming reputation stop you.