The “FCC Season” that precedes the holiday shopping seasons seems to be in full swing. Yesterday we saw the first of Amazon’s new tablets appear in the FCC’s filings, and now a new NVIDIA Shield Controller has made an appearance. This new controller carries model number P2920 and FCC ID number VOB-P2920. These values are very similar to the current NVIDIA Shield TV Controller, which has a model number of P2570, so this may be the new controller for a new NVIDIA Shield TV. The FCC filing doesn’t reveal much, but it does indicate the new controller uses Bluetooth instead of Wifi direct, like the existing model does. This is likely because the new controller does not appear to have a headphone jack anymore.
Wifi direct connections are superior to Bluetooth when transmitting audio, which is why the new Fire TV Game Controller switched to WiFi direct when it gained a headphone jack in the second generation model. If this new NVIDIA controller is infact going to be paired with an NVIDIA Shield TV, it seems NVIDIA may be shedding features to lower the price, in order to better compete with the Fire TV.
Judging by the silhouette of the new controller in the FCC documents, it seems the new controller has a slimmer profile than the current controller. The existing controller always reminded me of the original bulbus Xbox controller, which was generally disliked by most people, so it’s nice to see a more traditional form factor is being used for the new model.
NVIDIA has a history of releasing overpowered devices and then lowering the price each year, insteading of refreshing the hardware. The NVIDIA Shield TV is four times as powerful as the Fire TV 2, according to NVIDIA’s metrics, so it’s possible this new controller will be paired with the existing Shield TV at a lower retail price. This is the approach NVIDIA took with their Shield Tablet, which was released in 2014 for $300 and then re-released in 2015 with the exact same hardware for $200. Time will tell.
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On one hand I like to have the latest streaming tech, but I’m not sure what a new shield would offer. It is already so fast/powerful compared to the competition. Pascal would only matter for gaming. Maybe with 16nm they can make it cheaper than the old model, which would be a plus.
Any sign of a new remote? I like to see a cheaper Nvidia remote released.
The firestick remote works with it
For me the major thing is voice control and while both fire tv remotes work, the voice search doesn’t work on fire tv remotes and the center button or enter button don’t work in some games. I am hoping for a new nvidia remote with a few more buttons.
Looks like they removed the touchpad area in the center of the controller.
The Nvidia Shield Controller doesn’t have a touchpad. Perhaps you are thinking of the Steam controller
Except for the touch pad that the Nvidia shield controller has…
Capacitive buttons does not a touchpad make. Idk what shield controller you’re talking about, but I’m looking at two of them and a shield remote right now, and there is nothing but a capacitive volume slider on the remote and capacitive buttons on the controller. No touchpad
Its well hidden. And it looks nothing like a touchpad. Its that part of the contoller at the bottom though. As its not obvious Im guessing few people ever used it. But it lets you move a mouse pointer around by touch.works on shield tablet. Didnt work on shield tv. just tried it.
He’s correct. The area over the volume rocker is, in fact, a touchpad. It is only supported on the tablet, though.
It absolutely has a touchpad and always has had a touchpad. It’s not used anymore since the 3.0 update the the gray part of the controller above the volume rocker is a touchpad. Look at the geforce forums and you’ll find dozens of posts about people complaining that support was removed.
It was actually disabled with the 1.1 launch, it only ever worked with the FW (1.0) that came on the Shield at launch. It was removed because the Android TV framework does not support touch.
Hopeful that a new controller does indeed mean a new Shield, and that said new Shield has Dolby and DTS decoding. Really, this is the only thing keeping me on a Fire instead of a Shield.
It has passthrough for DTS ma and Dolby true HD, plus internally decodes all audio codecs as well. Where did you get that it didn’t? I have both a shield and a fire tv, and the shield has significantly better audio options
My explanation was incomplete. Unlike th AFTV, it doesn’t convert DD+ to Dolby Digital, so if you have, say Vizio’s new 2016 5.1 soundbar that doesn’t support DD+ (for SOME stupid reason…), or some other audio solution that doesn’t support DD+, you don’t get 5.1 sound from Netflix or any other source.
See:
https://forums.geforce.com/default/topic/840181/shield-android-tv/setup-help-for-netflix-5-1-surround-sound/
Any source that outputs DD+ or Dolby True HD that is.
Sorry, incomplete explanation #2.
Anyways, of the features I consider dealbreakers (5.1 in Netflix) its the one thing the AFTV has over the Shield.
Which doesn’t really matter, since you can software decode in apps like Kodi and if you’re decoding you don’t need 5.1 or above.
But the Shield does support 5.1 pass-through in Netflix, it just doesn’t support hardware decoding.
As I said, Netflix on the Shield only outputs DD+, so I and people with audio solutions that don’t support DD+ can’t get 5.1 sound like we can on the FireTV.
So kinda matters. A lil’ bit.
I never said anything about Kodi.
So thanks for agreeing with me, I guess…?
It does have a touch pad they have disabled it it’s the silver area above the volume buttons
I reckon it’s a controller for a new Shield Tablet that uses the Tegra X1 processor from the Shield TV. The current Shield tablets are still using the last-gen chips, and Google’s Pixel C tablet has an X1 in it now.
That would explain why audio output is less necessary.
According to reports, the X1 tablet has been cancelled. Some have speculated that it’s because Nvidia is supplying the Tegra/Pascal SoC for the Nintendo NX.
I also doubt that there’s a new Shield TV on the horizon, although anything could be possible. More likely is that Nvidia is replacing the current controller due to the fact that there’s been so many problems with them, especially with the touch buttons. On 2 of my 4 controllers the back button, which is needed for games like Borderlands, works sporadically and is one of the more common issues with the current controllers.