Entertainment: Nvidia console offers ultra- HD Android TV, plus gaming
Nvidia’s first- ever living room entertainment console went on sale Thursday, and the Santa Clara company is pushing in all its chips on Google’s Android TV platform.
Indeed, one of the more intriguing features of the Shield, Nvidia’s new combination ultra- highdefinition smart TV and game device, is a Live Channels app that lets viewers watch over- theair TV stations through their home Wi- Fi network.
That feature could attract cord- cutters — generally younger viewers who have stopped paying for or never had a standard cable or satellite TV subscription.
Live Channels is one of the new Android TV apps that Google unveiled earlier Thursday at its annual developers conference in San Francisco.
Google’s big pitch to win over more Android TV users comes two weeks before Apple’s developers conference, when it is expected to expand its Apple TV universe with a package of new TV channels.
So Nvidia is marketing the Shield as the “flagship of Android TV” and a new competitor to the Apple TV.
“We definitely see an epic battle looming in the living room,” said Ali Kani, Nvidia’s general manager for the Shield.
Nvidia made its mark with high- end graphics processors favored by serious video game players and power computer users. It has previously sold a high- end portable game console, also called the Shield, aimed at video game players.
But the home console is Nvidia’s first product designed for a general consumer audience that primarily watches TV and movies. The company is offering two versions — one with 16 GB of internal storage for $ 199 and a $ 299 Shield Pro with 500 GB of storage.
During a recent demonstration, Kani showed how to use the voiceactivated controls to search for movies, TV shows and favorite actors through Google’s revamped Android TV platform. The voice controls can also perform a general search for information about weather reports or sports scores.
The Shield can also access cord- cutting TV channel apps like Sling TV, Dish Networks’s online- only alternative to cable TV, as well as play music found on Google’s YouTube.
To demonstrate the Google- made Live Channels app, Nvidia set up an indoor digital TV antenna and tuner ( which are not included), near a window to pull in free over- the- air TV signals, which were then fed through a Wi- Fi connection to the Shield. The app displayed the available channels on the screen.
The Shield, powered by Nvidia’s Tegra X1 processor, is the first home video device to handle ultra- high- definition video streams from services like Netflix, Kani said.
Nvidia hopes the younger, cord- cutting crowd will be attracted by the Shield’s top games, normally available only on consoles or PCs, including the first- person shooter “Borderlands: The Pre- Sequel” or the puzzle game “The Talos Principle.”
Not only is Nvidia taking on Apple, but it’s also trying to slice into a video game console market dominated by the best- selling Sony PlayStation and Microsoft Xbox, which have also introduced TV- watchinggaming combinations.
By “leveraging the open ecosystem of Android,” Nvidia can “advance the experience of the living room,” said spokesman Ken Brown.
The company is selling the Shield on Amazon, BestBuy. com and its own website.