NVIDIA Brings Android 11 OS to SHIELD Devices with Latest Experience Upgrade

[Tsing]

Image: NVIDIA



NVIDIA has begun rolling out a new upgrade for its popular streaming media devices, the SHIELD TV and SHIELD TV PRO.



Dubbed SHIELD Experience 9.0, the new update delivers the latest version of Google’s ubiquitous OS, Android 11, to both devices. Users will also find a range of added features that include an updated Google Keyboard (Gboard), support for aptX-compatible Bluetooth headsets, new apps such as IMDb TV, and new benefits for GeForce NOW members.



“Gamers around the globe are upgrading their SHIELD TVs into a powerful GeForce RTX 3080-class gaming rig, unlocking extraordinary 4K HDR graphics exclusively on SHIELD, as well as immersive 7.1 surround sound, with the new GeForce NOW RTX 3080 membership,” NVIDIA wrote regarding its game streaming service.



“The SHIELD update provides all GeForce NOW members with new benefits. Twitch has...

Continue reading...

 

[Zarathustra]

Wait, aren't phones on Android 12?

That feels a little bit off.

Yes, let's upgrade to the previous gen.

 

[LeRoy_Blanchard]

I just recently got a SHIELD PRO to replace a Roku Ultra.

So far, I've been very pleased with it over the Roku Ultra. I only use it for my Plex collection and the Roku had issues with video playback on some movies/shows. (Skin tones being extremely bright red) While the SHIELD hasn't experienced that issue and it's even taken the load off my server from having to transcode since the SHIELD can handle (so far) everything direct play.

 

[GunShot]

Screw this ancient streaming hardware tech that was deployed in 2015 based on tech from 2010-13 specs hardware just to have weak revisions bumps in '17 and '19.

Release a FULL 8K streamer that can also upscale old content up to 8K.

Screw the great-great granddads that say "you can't tell the difference from 900p, 1080p, 2160p and now up to 4320p content" or "there's no 8k content and it won't be for year's!" BS... sick fear-mongers/hater love to claim. (Why dafaq are you concerned with our purchases? If it's not for you, fine but stop the dafaqing hating.)

If these geriatric's minds want to continue leaving under their bed and hate evolution, issue them a blanket and cut off the lights but tech should never freeze for the minority/naysayers.

 

[Brian_B]

If these geriatric's minds want to continue leaving under their bed and hate evolution, issue them a blanket and cut off the lights but tech should never freeze for the minority/naysayers.

I'll have one of whatever you're having.

 

[LazyGamer]

Release a FULL 8K streamer that can also upscale old content up to 8K.

These are usually built into the TVs.

The Shield devices, on the other hand, are generally more for convenience since they have just enough horsepower to handle modern streaming codecs.

Wait, aren't phones on Android 12?

That feels a little bit off.

Yes, let's upgrade to the previous gen.

Thought the same thing as I upgraded mine to Android 11 - but realistically, these aren't phones and they don't run the latest hardware, or even mobile phone hardware at all.

I'll say that for the function of a streaming box, I don't mind them erring toward stability if that's what lagging on OS revisions buys. I didn't even notice the difference after upgrading, and I consider that a good thing!

 

[Uvilla]

Screw this ancient streaming hardware tech that was deployed in 2015 based on tech from 2010-13 specs hardware just to have weak revisions bumps in '17 and '19.

Release a FULL 8K streamer that can also upscale old content up to 8K.

Screw the great-great granddads that say "you can't tell the difference from 900p, 1080p, 2160p and now up to 4320p content" or "there's no 8k content and it won't be for year's!" BS... sick fear-mongers/hater love to claim. (Why dafaq are you concerned with our purchases? If it's not for you, fine but stop the dafaqing hating.)

If these geriatric's minds want to continue leaving under their bed and hate evolution, issue them a blanket and cut off the lights but tech should never freeze for the minority/naysayers.

I agree with the hardware part, very old hardware.

 

[Zarathustra]

Screw this ancient streaming hardware tech that was deployed in 2015 based on tech from 2010-13 specs hardware just to have weak revisions bumps in '17 and '19.

Release a FULL 8K streamer that can also upscale old content up to 8K.

Screw the great-great granddads that say "you can't tell the difference from 900p, 1080p, 2160p and now up to 4320p content" or "there's no 8k content and it won't be for year's!" BS... sick fear-mongers/hater love to claim. (Why dafaq are you concerned with our purchases? If it's not for you, fine but stop the dafaqing hating.)

If these geriatric's minds want to continue leaving under their bed and hate evolution, issue them a blanket and cut off the lights but tech should never freeze for the minority/naysayers.

I mean, if you want to waste your money, go for it.

There is literally no combination of screen size and viewing distance which will result in any distinguishable improvement going from 4k to 8k. It is a complete and total waste of pixels.

It is a complete and total marketing number, made up to take advantage of those who are not knowledgeable enough to know the truth.

You can see an improvement if you are close enough that the screen doesn't fit in your field of view, but what good is that?

This is not opinion, it is objective fact.

 

[GunShot]

 

[Riccochet]

Nothing new. Most android based devices are running older versions of android OS. Unless the latest version of the OS offers some improved performance or features that the device can utilize, what would be the point in updating it?

If anything, this update is more for application compatibility than anything else.

 

[Space_Ranger]

Nothing new. Most android based devices are running older versions of android OS. Unless the latest version of the OS offers some improved performance or features that the device can utilize, what would be the point in updating it?

If anything, this update is more for application compatibility than anything else.

Security updates... That's about it..

 

[Stoly]

Screw this ancient streaming hardware tech that was deployed in 2015 based on tech from 2010-13 specs hardware just to have weak revisions bumps in '17 and '19.

Release a FULL 8K streamer that can also upscale old content up to 8K.

Screw the great-great granddads that say "you can't tell the difference from 900p, 1080p, 2160p and now up to 4320p content" or "there's no 8k content and it won't be for year's!" BS... sick fear-mongers/hater love to claim. (Why dafaq are you concerned with our purchases? If it's not for you, fine but stop the dafaqing hating.)

If these geriatric's minds want to continue leaving under their bed and hate evolution, issue them a blanket and cut off the lights but tech should never freeze for the minority/naysayers.

To think that this ancient streaming hardware is still the best android tv console after all these years. No other streaming device has been updated for this long.

 

[Space_Ranger]

Screw this ancient streaming hardware tech that was deployed in 2015 based on tech from 2010-13 specs hardware just to have weak revisions bumps in '17 and '19.

Release a FULL 8K streamer that can also upscale old content up to 8K.

Screw the great-great granddads that say "you can't tell the difference from 900p, 1080p, 2160p and now up to 4320p content" or "there's no 8k content and it won't be for year's!" BS... sick fear-mongers/hater love to claim. (Why dafaq are you concerned with our purchases? If it's not for you, fine but stop the dafaqing hating.)

If these geriatric's minds want to continue leaving under their bed and hate evolution, issue them a blanket and cut off the lights but tech should never freeze for the minority/naysayers.

Get off my lawn you young whipper-snapper!

 

[Stoly]

I mean, if you want to waste your money, go for it.

There is literally no combination of screen size and viewing distance which will result in any distinguishable improvement going from 4k to 8k. It is a complete and total waste of pixels.

It is a complete and total marketing number, made up to take advantage of those who are not knowledgeable enough to know the truth.

You can see an improvement if you are close enough that the screen doesn't fit in your field of view, but what good is that?

This is not opinion, it is objective fact.

Depends on screen size. For example there's little if any difference between 1080p and 4k on a 27" monitor. But jump to 40" and it becomes clear.

I'm sure that at 75" and above you will be able to tell the difference between 4k and 8k

 

[LazyGamer]

To think that this ancient streaming hardware is still the best android tv console after all these years. No other streaming device has been updated for this long.

Well, it was overpowered for its purpose on release - Nvidia built it as a gaming tablet SoC among other things. That also means that there's been very little reason to update the hardware, since streaming remains a bit 'lowest common denominator'. I think we'll see an update if AV1 becomes popular for streaming (or, when).

Depends on screen size. For example there's little if any difference between 1080p and 4k on a 27" monitor. But jump to 40" and it becomes clear.

I'm sure that at 75" and above you will be able to tell the difference between 4k and 8k

To @Zarathustra's point, we're talking pixel angles here. Since humans do not have an infinite field of view, and there's an objective limit to human vision, there must also be an objective limit to effective resolution within human field of view.

Now, I do feel that 4k is pretty darn close, and that 8k is probably beyond that objective human visual acuity limit. And if that's the case, then we'll probably stop at 8k - the point is to get that one step beyond, right?

---

The above is qualified 'within human field of view', meaning, what a person can look at 'at once'. For data displays we can obviously use that 'pixel density per angle of view' over a broader area. The difference with TVs is that they're generally dedicated to a single stream of information, whereas computer monitors (etc.) can have many information streams going at once.

 

[Zarathustra]

Depends on screen size. For example there's little if any difference between 1080p and 4k on a 27" monitor. But jump to 40" and it becomes clear.

I'm sure that at 75" and above you will be able to tell the difference between 4k and 8k

Well, it was overpowered for its purpose on release - Nvidia built it as a gaming tablet SoC among other things. That also means that there's been very little reason to update the hardware, since streaming remains a bit 'lowest common denominator'. I think we'll see an update if AV1 becomes popular for streaming (or, when).


To @Zarathustra's point, we're talking pixel angles here. Since humans do not have an infinite field of view, and there's an objective limit to human vision, there must also be an objective limit to effective resolution within human field of view.

Now, I do feel that 4k is pretty darn close, and that 8k is probably beyond that objective human visual acuity limit. And if that's the case, then we'll probably stop at 8k - the point is to get that one step beyond, right?

---

The above is qualified 'within human field of view', meaning, what a person can look at 'at once'. For data displays we can obviously use that 'pixel density per angle of view' over a broader area. The difference with TVs is that they're generally dedicated to a single stream of information, whereas computer monitors (etc.) can have many information streams going at once.

That's exactly the point I was trying to make.

The problem is that it won't fit in the human field of view. In order to distinguish the difference between 4k and 8k you'd need a combination of viewing distance and screen size such that the screen is larger than your field of view.

There are certainly applications for this, where you'd want the viewer to move their head around while looking at a huge screen, but not with what we currently understand as the paradigm for movies and TV. It would be like sitting on the very front row at the movie theater and constantly having to turn your head to follow what is going on, because you are too close to see the whole screen at any given time.

 

[Zarathustra]

You know, sadly what is going to happen is, 8K is eventually going to be the new marketing number everyone has to have, and content providers are going to be forced to up their streams to 8K, but aren't going to want to commit quite enough bandwidth to the task to do it right, so just like when 4k entered the scene we are going to get 8K content with low quality low bandwidth encodes that looks worse than the 4k and 1080p content already available.

I mean, even today for most peoples viewing distance and screen size combinations the difference between 1080p and 4k is not detectable to the human eye. You have to really get to enthusiast level screen sizes in dedicated close home theaters to thoroughly benefit from 4k, and on top of that 8K will offer little to no further benefit even if done right...

...but in exchange we are going to get crappier quality bandwidth starved 8k because of the "bigger numbers are always better" mindset in the industry being taken advantage of by marketers because if you can't sell the next "upgrade", you might just go out of business.

If anything, rather than focusing on 8k resolution as the path forward over 4k, we would probably benefit more from better implemented HDR, and other features.

 

[Stoly]

8k will be ruined by low bandwidth streaming anyway.

Still gaming on a 8k 75" monitor sounds awesome,

 

[Riccochet]

If they ever decide to stream lossless 4K bluray quality people would be less enamored by 8k.

 

[Brian_B]

and content providers are going to be forced to up their streams to 8K

Now, I've been out of the game for a couple of years now, but just a couple of years ago - I certainly had 4K TVs, and I recall Dish had nothing in 4K except the Olympics. In fact, most of Dish's "HD" stuff was still 1080i or 720. Last gen consoles (PS4 Pro) could set a 4K resolution, but with dynamic scaling they never ran any games at that resolution.

It wasn't until Starlink just last year that I could stream anything in 4K at all. The PlayStation Pro mysteriously didn't support 4K Blu Ray (even tho XB1X did), So it wasn't until 2021 that I had ever watched anything in 4K at all.

Having just caught up to the 4K bandwagon, I'm not terribly eager to jump to 8K. And I'd say, apart from the streaming services, where competition is pretty cutthroat, I didn't see any of the other providers very eager to get on board either. But that may have changed now.