The NVIDIA Shield TV is on sale for $129 for Black Friday. At just $21 off of the regular price of $149.99, it’s not much of a discount but it does match the lowest price that the latest 2019 cylindrical Shield TV has ever been. The new triangular remote is a bit odd, but certainly better than the one that came with the older Shield TV that it replaced. The only streaming device running Android TV that beats the Shield TV in specs is the Shield TV Pro, which is, unfortunately, not on sale. Unless you’re planning to run 64-bit apps, memory-hungry apps, or a Plex Server on the device, you’re likely not going to see much of a difference between the two models.
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The only reason I may buy one is due to the 4k upscaling, since I watch a lot of 1080p content on 4k tvs. But not sure if that is really worth the price, or how dramatic it is.
If that’s your only or main reason, I would definitely pass on it. I’ve tried it out and would turn it off if I used a Shield TV as my main device. When it makes a positive difference, it’s subtle and hardly noticeable at a distance. The issue is that it sometimes makes a noticeable negative difference, such as over sharpening that makes little light spots in the video image too bright and pop out when they’re not supposed to. I don’t know if this changed since it first came out, but it was also only even available to enable on a small set of apps.
Thanks for the input. Then I will pass. For the most part, I am pretty happy with my FTVs. I have grown to favor it’s GUI, and you can’t beat them for value.
Wow, not sure where to start. there are many practical reasons to switch from any other streaming device (fire TV in particular)
I was a long time fire TV user, owned all three iterations that all had the same issues I will describe here. I now use the new shield pro model on my main TV and the old model shield TV on another, both have the same major advantages I will describe here. The Pro just has more memory and faster processor. One disclaimer: I have never used this round version, only the original shield TV, and the newer Pro version.
Both start this discussion with much more shear memory and processing power than anything else on the market.
Both have Gigabyte Ethernet ports. To my knowledge both Fire and Roku still do not offer that. I begged Amazon for years to add that to their next model, and their complete lack of interest plus the next considerations, led to me moving on.
I was originally very happy with my Fire tv it always seemed to be one step ahead of roku in specs but they both had recurring issues with apps being available because of the constant and escalating corporate greed and arguing over kickbacks and payments. Never had that problem with the Shield,( it is also much easier to side load apps when necessary than the fire)
Here is the real recurring frustration with the Fire devices that finally made me pull the plug. The lack of adequate memory and the underlying software that manages that memory is a major problem. The system absolutely will eventually slow down to a crawl. Apps loading time will only increase with age, and buffering issues will become evident with time.
When apps are installed, (even if you have an external storage connected to relieve the very real issue of running out of memory and not having enough memory left for the operating system to buffer and do all its other jobs) that software always leaves a small portion of that apps code in the main memory. That is not actually a problem unless you like most people do not know of the coming tsunami of that action.
When you uninstall that app you tried out or no longer use, the code that was put on the main memory is left forever on that memory. The software has absolutely no provision for removing that code during uninstall, or to run any other program to clean that unneeded code from memory. The only solution is to do a complete system clean and reinstall, not a reboot. That means wiping everything including usernames and passwords for all apps and the operating system off your device and starting over. I think that is a major nuisance, is unacceptable, and shows that the maker of the device does not give a **** about you. They only want your money.
That is it. If you want more details keep reading:
When first installed it works great, the longer you own and use it the device just plain bogs down with dramatically increased loading and much slower responsiveness when switching or turning apps on. Also a greater incidence of buffering issues. Their tech support, though friendly and helpful, have no clue what they are telling you. They work off of scripts. Finally was able to escalate the problems to a higher level and got some very reveling information that is not published in any of their literature or support docks (which I pointed out to them many times are highly inaccurate and not up to date. they have one support doc on line for three three versions of the device that are all different enough to completely confuse any one trying to use them, including their own lower level techs)
That higher level tech gave me the only solution of wiping everything clean and starting from scratch and the reasons I gave above.
So the real question is how much is your time worth. Is the extra $60 to $80 for a shield TV worth not having to reinstall everything every 2 to 5 years depending on how many apps you have used over that time span?
How about the annoying symptom you will experience before you do the reinstall?
I think most people would not even call for support but just buy another device thinking theirs finally broke and was out of date. So how many of these devices do you want to buy over time. One every two to 5 years, or just one that will last for many times longer?
Maybe Amazon (Fire) and Roku know that and it is why they still make a defective product. After all designed obsolescence is all monopolies greatest revenue source. It is far more profitable to sell another device than to offer competent support on what you have already sold.
Because most the people using these devices trust these companies way too much and have little to no, tech savvy, these devices are a toy they rightfully get excited about and want to try everything they can see, or hear about, to decide what to keep. They are the ones who are ill equipped to deal with the frustrations I listed. And will be the ones just buying new devices to solve these problems.