Choosing a Streaming Box

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driller2000

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#1915518 8-Dec-2017 23:25

Rikkitic:

I recently bought a Shield for streaming because of all the good things I have read about it. I wish I hadn't. For my purposes, it is just an expensive paperweight. It is not compatible with most of the apps that were working on my cheap Chinese box. I keep discovering things it can't do instead of things it can do. I'm sure it is great for gaming and other things, but for streaming it doesn't do what I need. I have a $30 Chinese box that works better. I am very disappointed in it and I would not recommend it for this purpose. If all you want to do is run Kodi on it that might be okay, and Plex should also work, but many apps from the Google Store don't work and there are other things it can't seem to do that the cheap one can. It doesn't seem very flexible to me. You may be better off with something else.

Shame it hasn't worked out for you.

Happy to take off your hands if the price is right.

Rikkitic

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#1915584 9-Dec-2017 09:27

Thanks for the offer but in spite of my disappointment I will stick with it for the moment. I am still trying to work out what I can do with it.

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driller2000

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#1915596 9-Dec-2017 10:15

Rikkitic:

Thanks for the offer but in spite of my disappointment I will stick with it for the moment. I am still trying to work out what I can do with it.

Ok - all good. I love my SHield and would have been keen on a 2nd one. : )

As for your use case - Android TV does have less apps than std android - but the speed, slickness and features make the Shield TV (STV) by far the best option for my use case.

Anyway....not sure if you have tried, but you can install Sideload Launcher on the Shield (https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=eu.chainfire.tv.sideloadlauncher&hl=en) - and by doing so you can install other Apps that aren't designed for STV - albeit functionality is not always 100%.

(Note some may also require a mouse/kb given we have no touch interface - but this would be no different to other std android TV boxes.)

You can also find apks from the likes of Apkpure and install these via ES File explorer.

Appreciate you may have tried all of the above - but thought I wold mention it just in case!

PS: My offer still stands if you give up on the Shield :)

Rikkitic

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#1915604 9-Dec-2017 10:55

Thanks for the tips. One of the things I was going to try was looking further into sideloading so Sideload Launcher sounds like what I am looking for. So far my frustrations with the Shield have to do with perceived lack of flexibility in running apps that worked without problem on the cheap box. As a streaming device mainly running Kodi, it works as well as the other box did, though I'm not sure it is any better. I had hopes the added memory and better CPU would ease some of my buffering issues but that hasn't materialised. It may be marginally better, but not dramatically so.

The other things are just small annoyances, but they still bug me. There are several preinstalled apps that I don't want to use and cannot get rid of from the home screen, so things look messy. Maybe you could explain to me why you love your Shield. A lot of people seem to. That is one of the things that persuaded me to buy one. I really wish I could feel that love as well!

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reven

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#1915608 9-Dec-2017 11:05

if youre buffering, theres advancedsettings for kodi to increase the buffer size, this makes videos take an extra second or so (barely noticable) but greatly improves playback.

Rikkitic

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#1915611 9-Dec-2017 11:16

Yeah everyone keeps saying that. I have tried every Kodi optimisation setting there is. Nothing makes a blind bit of difference.

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driller2000

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#1915658 9-Dec-2017 13:41

Rikkitic:

Thanks for the tips. One of the things I was going to try was looking further into sideloading so Sideload Launcher sounds like what I am looking for. So far my frustrations with the Shield have to do with perceived lack of flexibility in running apps that worked without problem on the cheap box. As a streaming device mainly running Kodi, it works as well as the other box did, though I'm not sure it is any better. I had hopes the added memory and better CPU would ease some of my buffering issues but that hasn't materialised. It may be marginally better, but not dramatically so.

The other things are just small annoyances, but they still bug me. There are several preinstalled apps that I don't want to use and cannot get rid of from the home screen, so things look messy. Maybe you could explain to me why you love your Shield. A lot of people seem to. That is one of the things that persuaded me to buy one. I really wish I could feel that love as well!

It is imo the BEST Kodi box and does stuff few (any?) others can - esp if you use SPMC instead - incl:

Loads of grunt - which leads to flawless 4k playback of files up to 80G+ in size - with minimal buffering and only on startup (Note: This is with a wired CAT5 connection in my case - with content on an unRAID server. So if you are having buffering issues - I would check your network.)
HD Audio Soundtracks - incl Atmos and DTS:X
Library is integrated into voice search.
Addons like Covenant work flawlessly.

And a re-post of my previous post/review:

Love my Shield.

NF, YT, Amazon Prime and Vimeo give me 4k material. (NZ Accounts only.)

Other video apps I use incl the usual TED, RedBull, Vevo etc.

Prefer SPMC (to Kodi) as it allows HD Audio ie. DTS:X and ATMOS - also allows voice search. Usual addons in use.

Spotify, Google Music and CloudRadio (for Soundcloud acct access)...for music.

Cast Lightbox from Ph and SkyGo from Chrome on Windows PC.

Old school gaming via Mame4Droid - using their gamepad.

Have an original Shield so installed an SD card as internal storage so I could install other Android Games - drivers , shooters etc for casual gaming.

Has been bulletproof and reliable - highly recommended.

Also integrated with My Harmony Touch (using the shields IR sensor) and various macros - and works great.

Best tech purchase I have made in recent years.

Rikkitic

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#1915665 9-Dec-2017 14:09

I don't doubt the Shield's qualities for your kind of use but I am not trying to do any of the high demand things in your review. No Blu-Rays, no ATMOS, no voice search, none of that. I just want to stream regular VOD off the Internet and play some live streams. 1080p is fine with me, even SD would be acceptable. My problem isn't my LAN but my Internet. My download speeds should be more than adequate but my RBI connection seems to be really crappy. I can't do anything about that so am doing everything possible to optimise at my end. I had hoped the bigger memory buffer and CPU of the Shield would make some difference. It didn't, but it did add other problems, hence my disappointment. At this stage I just want to get live streaming and VOD working to an acceptable level and that is the frustration I am having. I am not trying to use the Shield or SPMC for anything other than that.

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driller2000

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#1915677 9-Dec-2017 14:48

OK - if your net is not so flash - then that is unlikely to be solved by any TV box :(

JimmyH

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#1915761 9-Dec-2017 18:43

It sounds like the Apple TV or the Shield are the way to go.

If Lightbox can be sideloaded on the Shield and work acceptably, the I think it wins. It's less locked down than the Apple platform, which is a huge plus. Otherwise, Apple TV looks like the choice.

Re the cheap boxes, I have tried one a while ago and it was flaky, underpowered, and choked on some stuff that it should have been able to play. Plus many of them seem WiFi only, and I want wired for streaming. It's more robust and reliable, esp when I eventuaklly move away from ethernet over powerline to running Cat6.

I want something relatively robust, user (=wife) friendly, that will have a decent service life.

Rikkitic

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#1921737 19-Dec-2017 10:03

When I raise a question, then find an answer later, I like to return to offer the answer for the benefit of anyone who may be reading along. That is not quite the case here, but what I have learned might still be useful for others.

I seem to be the only person in the world who is not impressed with the Nvidia Shield. I wanted it mainly as a streaming device, but after I got it I discovered it is incompatible with most of the apps I wanted to put on it. I tried sideloading and that worked for a few, but many others still would not function correctly.

With some effort I was eventually able to get Crackle sideloaded and working. I ended up downloading and trying different APK versions. Google Playstore is fairly worthless and the versions it has are often wrong. I searched for other sources and found some good ones, like APK Pure. I think I eventually got Crackle working on the Shield with version 6005 of the APK, but I could only get it working on my generic Android box with version 5000.

There are many versions of the Pluto APK. I think 3.49 is the most recent. However, this does not work at all with the Shield, but version 3.48 does. Go figure.

This still does not improve my opinion of the Shield, at least not as a streaming device. They seem to think Netflix is the only thing anyone ever wants to watch. But at least I have discovered that some apps, though by no means all, can be made to work with the Shield with some patience and trial and error. I am not sure if they would stop working if Google tries to update them so I have turned auto updates off. The fact that I have to resort to that kind of thing also doesn’t impress me much.

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reven

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#1921756 19-Dec-2017 10:34

Rikkitic:

When I raise a question, then find an answer later, I like to return to offer the answer for the benefit of anyone who may be reading along. That is not quite the case here, but what I have learned might still be useful for others.

I seem to be the only person in the world who is not impressed with the Nvidia Shield. I wanted it mainly as a streaming device, but after I got it I discovered it is incompatible with most of the apps I wanted to put on it. I tried sideloading and that worked for a few, but many others still would not function correctly.

With some effort I was eventually able to get Crackle sideloaded and working. I ended up downloading and trying different APK versions. Google Playstore is fairly worthless and the versions it has are often wrong. I searched for other sources and found some good ones, like APK Pure. I think I eventually got Crackle working on the Shield with version 6005 of the APK, but I could only get it working on my generic Android box with version 5000.

There are many versions of the Pluto APK. I think 3.49 is the most recent. However, this does not work at all with the Shield, but version 3.48 does. Go figure.

This still does not improve my opinion of the Shield, at least not as a streaming device. They seem to think Netflix is the only thing anyone ever wants to watch. But at least I have discovered that some apps, though by no means all, can be made to work with the Shield with some patience and trial and error. I am not sure if they would stop working if Google tries to update them so I have turned auto updates off. The fact that I have to resort to that kind of thing also doesn’t impress me much.

you should complain to the content providers. Its not google/nvidia stopping them from publishing an app for Android TV, they just havent done it. Netflix new people would want to use AndroidTV so they made an app for it, same with kodi, spmc, plex, amazon etc.

lchiu7

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#1924451 24-Dec-2017 10:33

I must admit I quite like Plex on Kodi on a Pi and with a $5 remote from Ali I can control it with my Harmony remote.

Apart from not having the streaming services for which I now use the new 4K Amazon Firestick, the only feature it lacks is the inability to pass through lossless audio. For that I use my Popcorn Hour, which while quite old now, still can pass through Dolby TrueHD and DTS Master Audio. Not sure about Atmos since I don't have any Atmos discs yet that I could backup and try but given I don't have an Atmos setup, that's not really relevant.

Staying in Wellington. Check out my AirBnB in the Wellington CBD. https://www.airbnb.co.nz/h/wellycbd PM me and mention GZ to get a 15% discount and no AirBnB charges.

psychnurse

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#1924454 24-Dec-2017 10:44

Picked up one of these a few weeks ago and really like it.

Buzz TV

Have a shield and nothing comes close to that when it comes to response times.

Apple TV 4 gives you the advantage to loading apps from all over the world but yes, no KODI.

lchiu7

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#1924575 24-Dec-2017 12:57

+1 on the Shield. I bought one as a gift for a friend in the US and he has replaced a number of services with it

- Using Plex as his media client (before he was using some old O-Play device which required that he navigate Windows shares to find content to play) with a user-friendly interface

- replacing his cable TV subscription (he was on a SD plan) with Youtube TV (app running on the Shield) which allows both real-time viewing of all network channels together with unlimited recording of shows. He lives in a poor OTA reception area so could not get the free network channels with an aerial.

Good pressie :-)

Staying in Wellington. Check out my AirBnB in the Wellington CBD. https://www.airbnb.co.nz/h/wellycbd PM me and mention GZ to get a 15% discount and no AirBnB charges.

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