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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hero4hire - Monday, June 1, 2015 - link
The question is not a matter of capablability but of utility. A $20-$30 chromecast does most of the functions. A smart TV by itself can do some. The Shield is a luxury device. Using nothing or a Roku on bottom to a ps4 or a htpc on top. Fitting in the middle and attacking a niche is this product.What does the more capable processor provide I've alternatives and am I willing to pay a little more for significantly more capability? That's the value question.
Yojimbo - Thursday, May 28, 2015 - link
"Though it’s a bit of circular logic to say that NVIDIA is intending to exploit these same advantage in the SoC space as they have the desktop space – after all, Maxwell was designed for SoCs first – Maxwell’s capabilities are clearly established at this point."There's a difference between circular logic and redundancy (much like there is a difference between circular logic and a tautology). To say that NVIDIA is intending to exploit the power-efficiency in the SOC space is simply redundant after you already said that NVIDIA designed the architecture that way in the first place. The citing of power efficiency in desktop products is simply giving evidence of power-efficiency. There's no implication of EXTRA power efficiency more than what was originally designed in the architecture by moving from desktop GPUs to the SOC GPUs. How can circular logic appear when no implication is being made?
testbug00 - Thursday, May 28, 2015 - link
"Ultimately it’s clear that the SHIELD Android TV is heavily overspeced compared to other Android TV devices – no one else is pursuing this premium market..."Perhaps because the market isn't large enough to justify a product aimed solely at it? Nvidia can leverage their streaming GPU stuff and a bunch of other stuff no other players really have.
Even with that, I don't think the market is large enough to support one player.
UltraWide - Thursday, May 28, 2015 - link
If I use a receiver and send the audio via bitstream to the receiver, will it play or not? I don't see why bitstreaming of audio requires a license? I thought the license is only required to actually decode the audio on the device and play some downmixed version of it.ganeshts - Thursday, May 28, 2015 - link
Try convincing Dolby, DTS and NVIDIA together :) I am with you on this one, but NVIDIA says licensing is the issue.cfenton - Thursday, May 28, 2015 - link
How does it handle external storage of apps? Android has typically been OK about reading media from an SD card, but it's recently been more and more restrictive about how apps can interact with external storage. Does Android TV (or some Nvidia custom magic) solve that problem? With only 16GB internal (and surely less user accessible) it will quickly run out of room if you want to install games. Recent experience with an Xperia Z3 and Nvidia Shield Tablet have not been promising on this front, at least without root access. The Xperia will copy some data to the external storage device, but still leave some on the internal, and the Shield Tablet is really picky about what games it will transfer to external storage. I'd want to just plug a 2TB portable drive into this thing, have it install everything there, and never think about it again, but based on past experience I'm worried that won't work.I know they want people to use GRID, but until data caps go away that won't be practical in many places.
Ryan Smith - Thursday, May 28, 2015 - link
The SATV can handle apps on SD cards. In fact it has a feature to automatically move newly downloaded apps to the SD card in order to better utilize the space it provides.docbones - Thursday, May 28, 2015 - link
Application support is going to be the biggest item. Will it be updated to run current Amazon Prime, Max Go, HBO Go, CW streaming, etc.Currently none of the Android TV type devices have parity to the number of streaming video apps that my phone does.
chizow - Thursday, May 28, 2015 - link
I didn't have much interest in this product or any of the previous Shield products, but with Windows Media Center's impending doom with Win10 and the prospect of Silicon Dust's HD HomeRun DVR as a viable replacement, I may have to look into getting one.It certainly seems to pack a lot of value and possibilities into a very small price tag of $200. I'm just not sure on the naming/branding, but I guess they think the Android TV aspect may have a higher demand than some of the gaming initiatives they are slowly building upon.
testbug00 - Thursday, May 28, 2015 - link
they really should make a $150 version that is just the console. Probably would increase sales quite a bit... Although, the controller and stuff is probably well under $50 to make however.