Nvidia Shield TV (2017) questions

ChuckMaurice · January 26, 2017

The Nvidia Shield TV has always been a thing I wanted to try to replace my Raspberry Pi HTPC, but the 2015 model wasn't sold with a remote and I wanted to see if Nvidia would upgrade it. Now that the new model is out (and I finally own an Android smartphone) I'm quite sold : a 300$ Plex client/server, a game streaming box and a 4K/HDR experience, what more can I ask for? Even Netflix and the Nvidia streaming subscription sounds nice for a casual gamer like me. But I still have some issues :

- Nvidia said that the remote would have an "always listen" functionnality. That sounds worrisome to me as I don't exactly know the AndroidTV privacy policy and don't want something always recording what happens in the room. Can it be turned off?

- I currently own an (old) Nvidia GPU - GTX670 - which is apparently compatible with home game streaming. But someday I might choose AMD for my next GPU so I worry about loosing the ability to stream games. The addition of the Steam streaming solution would solve this issue, but how much would I loose in performance?

What are your own experience with the Shield TV, new and older model? What do you use it for, do you love it?

KenjiUmino · January 26, 2017

4 hours ago, jldjul said:

The addition of the Steam streaming solution would solve this issue, but how much would I loose in performance?

i did not notice any degrade in performance on the host side while using steam streaming or streaming in genereal - maybe a frame or two if at anything all.

i guess since all modern GPUs do the capturing and encoding in hardware, this isn't as much of an issue as it was back when capturing half life 2 with fraps on a geforce 5600 could easily cut your framerate in half if not make the game unplayable alltogether.

anyways, switching from a nvidia gpu to an amd one might give you trouble with the nvidia streaming stuff - can't test it because i don't have a shield - but for steam streaming it should make no difference.