First Look at the NVidia Shield TV
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So my NVidia Shield TV arrived today. It is a small set top box that connects via HDMI to a television. It is powered by the NVidia Tegra X1 ARM RISC processor. The X1 is a quad core A57 64bit RISC CPU with an additional 256 Maxwell GPU cores on board. The Shield TV also includes 3GB of RAM. This is a lot of horsepower for an Android system. It makes for a pretty decent video game console device.
The base model Shield TV comes with 16GB of internal storage and is $179 currently. There is an upper model with a full SATA drive of 500GB for $299. You can add your own SD card for additional storage (128GB is commonly recommended, I just added 32GB for now.) You can use external hard drives via USB if you want, as well. It is a very flexible system not meant to lock you in.
I've gotten a few games downloaded to the system. One of the downsides currently is that the game library is rather small, but you can see all of the available games on NVidia's website before buying so no surprises there. I loaded up my machine with the GTA3 series of games (GTA3, Vice City, San Andreas, Liberty City Stories and Chinatown Wars), Star Wars Knights of the Old Republic and a few other titles. I've not had much time to look at the games but so far the system seems decently impressive playing post-XBOX era titles with ease. Everything looks very sharp and smooth.
The system ships with Netflix and you can easily add apps to it for other services like Hulu and such. Sadly Amazon Video on Demand is not officially supported on the platform.
I had some issues with initial setup having the WiFi configuration be buggy and not working at all. But after a power cycle, the system started to work. YouTube works extremely well.
The controller is a bit interesting. It has some capacitance buttons but mostly works like a standard controller as expected. It's comfortable and rechargeable, which I was not expecting.
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Looks very nice, might look into this instead of getting a gaming PC
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@hobbit666 said in First Look at the NVidia Shield TV:
Looks very nice, might look into this instead of getting a gaming PC
It's a nice box but pretty limited as a singular device. You have to pretty much want it for Grand Theft Auto third gen games (XBOX era), classic Final Fantasy (3-6, 9) and KOTOR if it is going to be your only gaming rig. There is not a huge game selection and while it is growing, it is growing slowly.
Be sure to check the website for the list of all available games for it. Go to the link below, be sure to filter by Shield TV and in ten minutes you can see all currently available games. Some decent, modern titles... mostly platformers.
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Played KOTOR last night on the Shield TV and have to say that it does great. I think that it looks and feels better than KOTOR on the PC via Steam, even. The graphics have been slightly updated, the controls are rock solid and everything has been tweaked to be native for the Android TV. Only put in ten minutes or so but it is great. This appears to be the way to play KOTOR.
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Some highlights from the Shield TV gaming lineup if someone is interested in it:
- Contrast
- Resident Evil 5
- Oddword: Munch's Odyssey
- Lost Echo
- XPlane 10
- Talos Principle
- Portal
- Half Life 2
- Half Life 2 Episode 1
- Half Life 2 Episode 2
- Final Fantasy III
- Final Fantasy IV
- Final Fantasy V
- Final Fantasy IV
- Final Fantasy IX
- Adventurers of Mana
- Qube
- Ys I
- Ys II
- A Wolf Among Us
- Walking Dead: Season One
- Walking Dead: Season Two
- Leo's Fortune
- Borderlands: The Pre-Sequel
- Valiant Hearts: The Great War
- The Bridge
- Game of Thrones (Telltale)
- Minecraft Story Mode
- Badlands
- NBA Jam
- Oddworld: Stranger's Wrath
- Anomaly 2
- Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance
- Octodad: Dadliest Catch
- Dead Effect 2
- Never Alone
- Juju
- Whispering Willows
- Windward
- The Beggar's Ride
- Doom 3
- Grand Theft Auto 3
- Walking Dead: Michonne
- Goat Simulator
- GoatZ
- Goat Simulator MMO
- Red Ball 4
- This War of Mine
- Machinarium
- Tales from the Borderlands
- Borderlands 2
- Grand Theft Auto: Chinatown Wars
- Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas
- Grand Theft Auto: Vice City
- The Bard's Tale
- ......
Probably tons that are good that I've never heard of. Check the list when you have time.
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Goat Simulator MMO, really? I mean, I did buy Goat Simulator when it went on sale, but does it really entertain for more than 20 minutes?
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KOTOR runs great on my Galaxy S6. I just finished beating it yesterday. It took me about 40 hours ( I took my time). It seems like that is just a list of android games.
Does the Nvidia Shield TV come with the full Google Play Store?
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@IRJ said in First Look at the NVidia Shield TV:
Does the Nvidia Shield TV come with the full Google Play Store?
Yes, but it is Android TV not Android. So the Google Play Store list for it is tiny. Literally just the things on the NVidia page that I linked.
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@IRJ said in First Look at the NVidia Shield TV:
It seems like that is just a list of android games.
There are a handful of Android TV only titles, but nearly everything that runs on Android TV also runs on Android, but not the other way around.
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@travisdh1 said in First Look at the NVidia Shield TV:
Goat Simulator MMO, really? I mean, I did buy Goat Simulator when it went on sale, but does it really entertain for more than 20 minutes?
My kids love that game for some reason. But they don't like the MMO DLC.
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@scottalanmiller said in First Look at the NVidia Shield TV:
@IRJ said in First Look at the NVidia Shield TV:
It seems like that is just a list of android games.
There are a handful of Android TV only titles, but nearly everything that runs on Android TV also runs on Android, but not the other way around.
Well not all Android apps run on Adroid TV, but actually most of them do work if you sideload them. Sometimes the controls can get lost if the apps only work for touch screen devices. I have sideloaded alot of apps and most android apps do work on Android TV.
