The NVIDIA SHIELD Android TV Review: A Premium 4K Set Top Box
by Ganesh T S on May 28, 2015 3:00 PM EST- Posted in
- Media Streamer
- Home Theater
- TV
- 4K
- Shield
- NVIDIA
Gaming - NVIDIA's Trump Card
NVIDIA's Tegra lineup has traditionally differentiated itself from a host of other ARM-based SoCs in the target market with the in-house GPU. In the Tegra X1, we have a GPU based on the Maxwell family, and as benchmarks showed, the performance is very good. Broadly speaking, next to 4K Netflix support, NVIDIA considers gaming capabilities to be the trump card for the SHIELD when compared to other OTT STBs.
With that said, you’re not going to be seeing a lot of official talk from NVIDIA about gaming on the SHIELD Android TV today, and that’s for two reasons. First and foremost is simply because not all of the pieces are ready. The commercial GRID service does not launch until next month, and while SHIELD can access the current beta service, it goes without saying that half of what we write on GRID will be made obsolete in 5 weeks anyhow. Meanwhile some of NVIDIA’s well-promoted AA and AAA games are ready – games like The Talos Principle and Doom 3: BFG – while other games like Borderlands: The Pre-Sequel and Crysis 3 are not here.
The second reason meanwhile is that given the SHIELD’s launch amidst Google I/O, NVIDIA is also making the conscientious decision to focus on those features that are most relevant to the Google I/O crowd and the contents of Google’s presentation. With the device’s announcement at GDC 2015, NVIDIA played to gaming amidst a gaming crowd, while for the device’s launch they’re playing to everything that’s amazing about Android TV, the Android TV ecosystem, and 4K TV.
The point being that NVIDIA hasn’t forgotten about gaming, but the SHIELD Android TV’s gaming capabilities aren’t what NVIDIA is focusing on first. Expect to hear a lot more about gaming later in June once the GRID commercial service is up and running.
As for today’s launch, while gaming isn’t in the forefront, that doesn’t mean it doesn’t work. As we briefly mentioned earlier several high-profile games are already available, so we’ve still had a chance to look at what NVIDIA’s latest SHIELD can offer for gaming.
A big part of NVIDIA’s long-term gaming plans for the SHIELD family of devices involves working with game developers to ensure that Android gaming grows beyond the casual, free-to-play titles that are currently popular. As a product of these dev-relation efforts, a number of games are going to be introduced in the Play Store to bring out the gaming prowess of the Tegra X1. We had the chance to play around with a few such as The Talos Principle, Hotline Miami, Luftrausers, Doom 3 : BFG Edition, War Thunder and family-friendly casual games such as JUJU.
The above screenshot shows the level of graphics that provides for smooth playable frame rates in the SHIELD. Based on what I've seen, I don't believe the internal rendering resolution is 1080p in The Talos Principle, but I suspect it's not too far off.
With NVIDIA carrying over the SHIELD gamepad from last year's SHIELD Tablet launch, playing games on the SHIELD Android TV works about as well as you'd expect for a second-generation effort. The performance of the set top box is still closer to the last-generation consoles than the current-generation consoles, and graphics quality matches up accordingly. NVIDIA is well aware that they can't compete with the game consoles for first-run AAA games, so their focus here is going to be on a sort of best-of-the-best approach of bringing older, well received games to the console and a user base NVIDIA believes is distinct from the traditional game console crowd.
Shifting gears for a bit, we also have the matter of casual games. From a technical standpoint, it goes without saying that casual games such as JuJu do not pose much of a challenge for the SHIELD.
In addition to the above, NVIDIA has indicated that more than 20 new titles are coming exclusively to NVIDIA SHIELD in the coming months.
We also recorded power consumption at the wall while playing the above two games on a 4Kp60 display. In both cases the SHIELD consumed around 19.4 W on an average, considerably more than the power consumed in the media playback process.
Finally, one of the interesting features is the ability to live-stream to Twitch or record game-play using the SoC's hardware encoder. We tested the latter feature out. The resultant recordings were placed under /sdcard/Movies/Game Recordings. Irrespective of the playing resolution, the recording is always a 2 Mbps 854x480 video at 30 fps (encoded in H.264). The audio is a 128 kbps 2-channel AAC stream. The sample we recorded has been uploaded to YouTube and embedded below. Full MediaInfo details are available in the YouTube description.
Facebook
Twitter
RSS
167 Comments
View All Comments
Morawka - Thursday, May 28, 2015 - link
the chip and the wires (hdmi) have the necessary bandwidth, so shouldn't be a issue.Haydon987 - Thursday, May 28, 2015 - link
Shouldn't be in the case of dozens of currently existing devices, but in every case so far of any publicly available hardware I've seen, all encrypted content comes out 4:2:0 at 4k, so it would be nice for a vendor to acknowledge if it plays 4k hdcp 2.2 at 4:4:4 or just plays unencrypted stuff (like games, menus, ads, etc.) at 4:4:4 at 4k. Until a vendor specifically states it, I have my doubts. Sure all the features are listed to make it sound good to people who don't look too deeply into it, but they don't state when the features are interoperable.It's like a person listing for a spec sheet about themselves:
1. I can run 17 miles per hour
2. I can run 25 miles
This does not mean that this person can run 25 miles at 17 miles per hour. They are just 2 separately listed specs. Chances are they only maintain that speed for a few seconds.
In this case what is most likely:
1. I can play without color compression (4:4:4)
2. I can play protected content at 4k (hdcp 2.2), but I won't tell you if that is compressed or not.
ganeshts - Friday, May 29, 2015 - link
That is definitely an interesting question, but it is somewhat moot.. let me explain:Getting specs out of the way, the SHIELD does support RGB 4:4:4 at 4Kp60 on the HDMI port.
Now, all video content that consumers play back - Netflix or Blu-rays and the like - they are all encoded in 4:2:0 - In this case, the consumer has nothing to gain or lose whether the conversion to 4:4:4 is done on the source side or the sink side. So, HDCP 2.2 with just 4:2:0 support is fine.
On the other hand, for professional applications, where content is processed in 4:2:2 or even 4:4:4 format, it will be a problem - but, it is likely that the workflow process in that case doesn't involve protected content - the protection is applied / needed only on the consumer delivery side.
Again, this is an interesting aspect, and one that I will definitely be questioning HDMI source / sink vendors on. It is just that it doesn't matter for consumer applications.
457R4LDR34DKN07 - Thursday, May 28, 2015 - link
I'm interested in trying this with a hdhomerun prime with the live tv app. Does this android tv device support mpeg 2 decoding?457R4LDR34DKN07 - Thursday, May 28, 2015 - link
"The typical media library also includes TV programs that are interlaced MPEG-2 (for example). The SHIELD is currently not a good solution for such a case."Thanks, not for me then
Ryan Smith - Thursday, May 28, 2015 - link
The Live Channels app supports hardware MPEG-2 decoding, including deinterlacing. That functionality just isn't available to other media playback applications, since it was licensed for just the Live Channels app.DanCar - Thursday, May 28, 2015 - link
The recommendation row can be turned off partially or fully in settings -> System Preferences (3rd row) -> home screenYou can select which sources to enable and disable.
ganeshts - Saturday, May 30, 2015 - link
Somehow, I am not able to follow the path you are referring to..Under settings, I have Device > System, and under that nothing about Home Screen.. Do you have a video or set of screenshots showing the path?
I know that it is possible to go into the settings of a particular app and turn off the Notifications for that app - on Android TV, that turns off the 'Recommendations' - this is what I had done for the YouTube video showing the Android TV UI. The Recommendations row doesn't seem to have an option to turn it off completely..
BuddyRich - Thursday, May 28, 2015 - link
I was hoping they spent the money and licensed the codecs but no HD Audio or DTS (or MPEG2 or VC1) is a bummer. At least in the case of the video codecs the CPU is fast enough to decode in software. Will not replace my HTPC. Its funny they license them for their videocards, including their cheapest passive ones but not their premium set-top box. And the box doesn't even have to decode it, just pass it through to a receive, that shouldn't require a license at all.One thing that was unclear in your review though, if I use HDHomerun/Live TV app will it decode and deinterlace MPEG2 via hardware since the app is licensed? If so is this supported on Shield like it is on Nexus Player?
At least they shipped with working Netflix, unlike Razor.
webdoctors - Friday, May 29, 2015 - link
Why is a license needed if its just bit-streaming? If i connect it to my amp and my amp separates the hdmi video from the audio signals, why would the licensing matter on this box?