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.
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testbug00 - Friday, May 29, 2015 - link
Nintendo can design a competent OS. The fact their OS runs smoother than Android did for years on Hardware that Android would choke on isn't really a negative.I'm not joking either, the sad part. And, why would the hardware force them to? Why would they risk people being able to pirate all their games super easy?
tipoo - Friday, May 29, 2015 - link
The 3DS, sure, modern android would choke on that hardware. But the design of getting around is still pretty byzantine. Anywho. The Wii U though? With 2GB RAM, half reserved for the OS, and three PowerPC750 based processor cores at 1.2GHz, the thing is still terribly slow for something released so recently. Meanwhile Android is butter with four low power Cortex A7 cores and does ok on 1GB RAM total.Not saying they should or shouldn't. And I'm not sure it would make piracy easier - even going with Android, being open source they can add their old security. Not that the Wii or DS were very secure from piracy either.
tipoo - Friday, May 29, 2015 - link
And what I mean by the 3DS bit...I picked up a 2DS from Target Canada while they were liquidating, half off so I thought what the hell. Didn't have much chance to use it until now.Went into street pass, there was an update available. Ok, go for it. Hit ok, confirm ok, yes it's ok it will take a while. Loads for a minute, then tells me I need to do a system update first. Figure out how to do that, easy enough. Start system update, confirm system update, yes it's fucking ok it will take a while. System update done.
Go back to streetpass plaza, start update. Hit ok, confirm ok, yes it's ok it will take a while. Connecting to online account. Cool. Takes a minute. Then tells me I don't have enough SD storage space. You couldn't check that first?! There's a message that tells me where to go to free storage. So, why can't there just be a button within the message that takes me there?
It could be because every time you close software, there's a button to really close it, and then a confirmation dialogue. Ach, getting real tired of your shit, Nintendo. A few more seconds of wait after you hit the *real* close button, too, because...I dunno. Nintendo.
Delete some crap. Go back to install the thing. Hit ok, confirm ok, yes it's ok it will take a while. Works this time. Go through the new Plaza to see what's new. Go through a bunch of dialogue with a talking rabbit just to see screenshots of each game. You can hold R, but it's still pretty slow.
Did I mention slow? The byzantine software layout may not even bug me as much if the thing was fast, but this is *really* slow. It's old hardware, I get that, plus it was low end hardware even at launch, but that doesn't stop it from being aggravating. The eShop being the worst of it. Going back and forth through pages is painstaking.
Some people have and probably will try to remind me that Nintendo is focused a lot on children. I honestly don't think even kids need all this padding though - this is the iPad generation, they'll get the hang of things in a jiffy, and don't need three confirmations from a talking dildo or whatever weird crap Nintendo wants to do every time they open or close software or after they've already said yes to a download.
Even with more attractive games on it than smartphones have, I find myself almost reluctant to use it every time for the slowness and very pre-iPhone software.
eanazag - Friday, May 29, 2015 - link
Nintendo just needs to give up on the hardware aspect and just distribute software. I would even pay for oldies like Excite Bike on iOS/MS Store/Google Play. I think they can still do regular consoles, but I have been disappointed with them. Good peripherals is still a market they could sell for.If anything, just sell the old stuff on those other services a make a dollar.
mkozakewich - Saturday, May 30, 2015 - link
If I were them, I'd work with a vendor to design a Nintendo Phone. Like, imagine an LG phone with Nintendo branding, a thumbstick, and four buttons? Maybe shoulder buttons, too. Whatever they could fit. (They might be able to get away with shoving all the usual 3DS buttons on.)smorebuds - Tuesday, June 2, 2015 - link
This is more what I was referring too. If Nintendo focused on releasing software (to the Android/iOS market where they'd make the biggest splash) then wouldn't a Nintendo set top box like this Shield make sense too? It would just be the Nintendo-branded and skinned Android box, maybe with some extra Nintendo-specific features thrown in.FMinus - Wednesday, June 3, 2015 - link
Why would they do that, I'm still pretty happy with my WiiU and their hardware offers something that noone else does, or usually copies it in one way or another. Besides Nintendo is sitting on a lot of cash, possibly more as Microsoft and Sony game divisions together anyway, so there's no fear of them going away anytime soon.Aside of that, they are the only company making consoles relatively affordable and kid friendly. Just as an example The Xbox/Playstation UI are an abomination to navigate for a 6 to 10 year old. And most importantly, Nintendo is focusing on games, not being the center of your living room, I'd gladly strip both the Xbox One and Playstation 4 of all the useless features (to me) if they offered them for $250.
stoicromance - Thursday, May 28, 2015 - link
So am I to understand that you can load pretty much any Google Play app onto this? Can I just throw VLC and Plex onto the Shield?Ryan Smith - Thursday, May 28, 2015 - link
Through the Play Store, an app needs to be flagged as supporting the 10ft Android TV UI in order to show up. Though you can sideload practically anything.ganeshts - Thursday, May 28, 2015 - link
Plex already comes pre-bundledVLC doesn't work that well right now on the SHIELD