Nvidia Shield
The ultimate streaming player and gaming device in one.
“The Shield TV has one feature that most AndroidTVsystems lack: Nvidia Games. ”
The Nvidia Shield TV has always been something of an odd duck in the streaming-player crowd. The first-gen model had a clever idea – half game console, half streaming box – but a cumbersome design. The second-gen model corrected a lot of the lingering issues, but still cost an awful lot of money (up to $300) in a market where 4K HDR streamers usually go for $50.
With the new Nvidia Shield TV (US$150, with no official Australian price announced yet), the company is trying something a little different. Not only can you stream top-notch PC games from your own collection; you can also enjoy fast-loading 4K HDR content and ambitious AI upscaling for 1080p video. Then there’s the Android TV OS, which offers thousands of apps, in addition to smart-home and digital-assistant compatibility.
The Shield TV has one feature that most Android TV systems lack: Nvidia
Games. Selecting this will bring you to a variety of Android games, but also to GeForce Now. While GeForce Now has been through a few different iterations, it’s now a free game-streaming service. There are a handful of games available absolutely free of charge, such as Batman: Arkham City and Tomb Raider (2013), but these are mostly holdovers from an earlier experiment.
For the most part, GeForce Now is a way to stream games that you’ve already purchased on Steam, UPlay and similar services. The way this works is actually quite clever. You sign into your Steam/UPlay account on a remote server, which then downloads the game and streams it right to your Shield TV. The Shield will let you know when you’ve picked an incompatible title.
Android TV has access to thousands of apps – although like most app stores, there’s a lot more chaff than wheat. At the very least, you’ll be able to get just about every major channel and just about every channel-specific streaming app out there.
It’s worth noting that you can also program routines and even control certain smart-home gadgets through the built-in Google Assistant. If you prefer Alexa, you can also set up the Shield TV to work with commands from Amazon’s digital assistant, including powering on, selecting content and pausing shows.
The Shield TV is a powerful device, sporting a Tegra X1+ processor, 2 GB RAM, 8 GB storage, and support for Dolby Vision and Atmos. As such, there’s no reason to discuss video performance in great detail. The Shield TV loads and buffers 4K HDR content very quickly.
What’s more interesting is what the Shield TV does with all its extra power. Nvidia has programmed in a proprietary form of AI upscaling. Without going into too much detail about how it works, the Shield TV employs an algorithm to make 1080p pictures look more like 4K images, both in motion and when paused. You can set this upscaling to Low, Medium or High, depending on how aggressive you want to get, or you can turn it off entirely if you don’t trust it.
From its ambitious AI upscaling to its surprisingly solid game streaming, the Shield TV is definitely aiming for a gaming/ streaming audience rather than the everyday bingewatcher. But I think it provides just about everything those gamers and streamers would need, at a much more approachable price than before.