robin2099

Anyone have and use one of those? The price seems crazy for it, and I'm curious if it's really worth the $199 they charge for it?

DJariya

I have one and it's a pretty solid streaming player IMO. It streams in 4K and has a pretty wide assortment of apps.

I would hold off until Black Friday and see if there are any deals. I got mine last Black Friday for $149.

My advice if you do get one is to also purchase an Android keypad. It makes using the device so much easier. You can buy one on Amazon for under 20 bucks.

Also I would recommend getting a maybe 60GB flash drive (I think that should be enough) to become your new internal storage. The device only has 16GB of internal storage. There are multiple USB ports.


I know you have DC Universe and it does have an app in the Google play store. It's so much better than the Apple TV or iOS version.

IDrinkMolson

Yeah, I almost bought one on Amazon Prime day. They had it for $139.
If I see a better deal than that one I'll probably buy one. I'm happy with the Roku/Apple Tv for now.

fujishig

I bought it on Amazon Prime day, and I like it well enough. But it depends on what you want to use it for, if it's just for streaming, you're probably fine with like a roku or fire tv or something as long as the app you want is available. The main "extra" thing you can do with it is stream games from your computer, but I don't use that feature at all. Well that and google assistant and native plex support.

It has it's own game store, but again, I never use it.

There are some weird quirks with the storage. If you use it as external storage to swap content between your computer and your shield, there is usually some kind of lag. Better to just stream straight off your computer if you have that setup.

This is pretty much the exact CPU/GPU combination Nvidia sold to Nintendo for the switch.

IDrinkMolson

$139.99 right now
http://www.amazon.com/NVIDIA-Shield-.../dp/B075RXV2VR

DJariya

They just price matched Best Buy who is also selling it for the same price.

It's worth it IMO if you don't have a Roku or Apple TV. It's 4K UHD and the app selection is pretty good.

kahuna

Between 11/08/18-11/10/18 Amazon was giving away a free Echo Dot (3rd Gen) & Best Buy the same plus 30 days of free Sling service.

On BF Best Buy will have the Nividia Shield with the Remote & Game Controller for $20 more.

james2025a

I bought one of these last November and after canceling my cable TV subscription this month i have spent the last few weeks playing with it and setting it up. I can see for many the device might be a little more complicated than a lot of other similar items on the market, but i have to admit that i am seriously loving this thing. We have gone full on streaming and at this point there is no looking back. My DISH monthly bill was just under $130 a month. Now i pay for Netflix ($13) Amazon (i get student rate so around $65 for the year) and Hulu (i got the 99 cents a month offer that was available in November). So my monthly bill is now under $20 a month and i get a huge library to choose from. Not just that, but i have been ripping all my DVDs to put on an external drive and have them running through Kodi. Got about 1,100 movies and a few hundred TV episodes done so far, and around 1000 more movies and a hell of a lot more TV shows to put onto them.

The reason why i actually chose a Shield was that late last year i was looking at Emulators and i saw a few boards for sale and also looked into Raspberry Pi devices. I have a large collection of old ROMs, but wanted something i could play them through other than my PC. Once i saw this i knew it would be perfect. Its taking a little time to get there, and still a ways off, but its doing pretty good through the Shield. I downloaded RetroArch and also Dig and being looking at both of those. I know Retro seems to be the more popular, but i really like Dig a lot. So as an emulation platform is really good as well. Just don't expect to be running more modern games i guess. On top of that i like the fact that you can stream games from your PC and also stream games and play them over the Shield. I didnt even know this was possible until i first set it up. I saw the options to play games like Just Cause 2 and SOnic Team Racing and tried JC2 off the bat and it played great, without needing a PS3 or a hefty PC.

I also love the size of this thing. It is seriously small for something that does so much. I would certainly recommend people to buy this thing, but to try and get it on sale the $199 price is a little steep.

DJariya

There are 2 new Nvidia Shield models on the market

https://www.nvidia.com/en-us/shield/shop/

The Shield TV for $150

Shield TV Pro for $200

Alan Smithee

Bumping this since I got a Shield TV Pro this week, making it my FIFTH streaming device though I've already put away the Chromecast since this pretty much does everything that can, and likely won't be using the Amazon Fire Stick anymore either.

For the most part it's great- but still doesn't seem to run as smoothly as the Apple TV and this still costs more than that. I got it mainly to use Kodi, which it comes with pre-installed. There's a lot of pirated content on that, but there are also home-brew add-ons to run legitimate services through very minimal interfaces, some just showing the movie titles and nothing else. Since I absolutely hate when interfaces butt into content (shrinking the screen during credits, showing Skip prompts or ratings info) this is a godsend. I was already using Airplay on Apple TV with an iPad for a few services but Netflix doesn't support that, Disney Plus stopped passing Atmos through it a few months ago and Hulu won't play 4K through it. Disney and Hulu play through Kodi with the best available quality, as does Netflix- it's SUCH a relief to watch shows there and not see that stupid "Skip Intro" taunting you or spoiler-filled ratings info at the beginning of everything ("Rated TV-MA for that nude scene you weren't supposed to see coming.")

There's a bunch of other interesting non-piracy add-ons for Kodi I still have to explore, found one that will let me see Australia's ABC network and also accesses the other networks there but those are geo-blocked, will have to look into a VPN. They have one for Samsung TV Plus for use on non-Samsung TVs that seems to access every channel in the world available through that- found one channel showing Cheers reruns in German. I'm not a computer expert but it's been fun figuring out how to add stuff- I found the unit's "Downloader" app is really a full web browser and you can click on some links directly from there and install them.

It has two USB inputs which will play stuff off of hard drives, useful as I've transferred several boxes' worth of old off-air tapes to one and haven't had time to properly author those to disc yet. Will have to find a game controller and check out the games on it; had a free trial subscription to Apple Arcade on the Apple TV but could never get ahold of a controller that would work with that. This one oughta be easier with the USB jacks on it.

Only real technical issue is that when I have Dolby Vision enabled, my TV will indicate it's receiving it but the screen will go black. I had to disable it and use HDR instead; I've seen online that's been a common problem with these.

Alan Smithee

I should just keep quiet about this but will share it here- in addition to bypassing annoying interfaces, Kodi also lets you watch many ad-supported services with NO commercials. I've watched a lot of stuff from Tubi and Crackle and it plays it all straight through, not stopping for commercials at all. I also downgraded my Hulu subscription to the cheaper ad-supported tier just to see if commercials would play on that, and Kodi will still play their shows with NO commercials. It's possible the same may apply to the Disney Plus and Netflix services with ads when those start. Best to not spread this around too much though as they'll find some way to "fix" this if word gets out.

Kodi also works on the Fire Stick but it was rather glitchy when I tried it there, it runs a lot more smoothly on the Shield as it just has more hardware to work with and I have the internet connection hard-wired also.

I've given up on Dolby Vision on my LG TV also, it just can't let you set the picture correctly. Two out of the 3 picture modes dim the picture when it shouldn't, and the Vivid mode won't let you get the levels set just right- most of the time colors look like they're painted over the black and white picture. Just settling for regular HDR which doesn't have those problems on this TV.