Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

Quick update to this review 5 days in - still loving it! Especially the grid service. Bottom line this device is the best cord-cutting device I have found - beats apple tv, roku, fire, nexus player for me on the cord-cutter/video side + has great gaming. Its already almost perfect in my opinion (see below for gaps). I purchased two units – one for a 4k tv, one for a 1080p. So here goes the most comprehensive amazon review I’ve ever done :) Cord-cutters/video capabilities: I am using Netflix, hulu, slingtv, play movies, youtube, hdhomerun and a little bit of plex. *Netflix – I originally didn’t think I would need this app since I had a built in app on the tv. I was wrong. My built in tv app has always been painful to use (slow/sluggish). With shield, it is super snappy. Takes a lot of irritation out of my browsing experience. And the 4k picture looks great. My only wishlist for Netflix is that they integrate into the google global voice search. I think this is on Netflix to enable though in their app. *Hulu – works great. And integrated into global voice search. *Play movies – works great (as expected). Also integrated into global voice search. *Youtube – ditto. *Hdhomerun – Live channels (and IP-TV in general) is a great addition here. My TV’s are not in an OTA antenna “friendly” area of my house. I can put my hdhomerun+antenna anywhere I have a network port. Lets me set up the antenna in a great reception area. The live channels app is great as well – brings the legacy channel surfing experience to the box. And quality is surprisingly good (HD quality). My only wish here is to incorporate DVR capabilities. I’ve heard that this is coming with an hdhomerun app update. I have also heard that Tablo supports this today (but have not tried my tablo yet with this product). *SlingTV – works great. Quality great and rounds out my basic channel need that I don’t get with the apps above (ESPN, CN, adult swim, AMC, TNT, HBO…). My wishlist here is the same as every other SlingTV customer. Would be so nice to have DVR, VOD services :) *Plex – I don’t really have any 4k content but I do have plenty of 1080p. Plex worked great on the box – really snappy compared to other plex implementations and have not seen any compatibility issues. Plus plex content also gets picked up in global voice search. *Cast – And of course this device supports cast so no need for chromecasts on the TV anymore. Cast also covers all of the above wishlist items until native ATV apps are available. There are other apps for cord-cutters available as well (cinema now, ultraflix, crackle, etc) – don’t really use these so no review. Apps I am looking forward to getting on this device – slingbox client (heard you can sideload app but prefer them to just have an ATV client). Amazon IV (don’t know status but hoping). HBOnow (heard this is coming shortly – while SlingTV gives me live HBO, with HBOnow I can get all the video on demand content). ESPNGo (essentially same comment as HBOnow). Overall this is alread the most complete cord-cutting solution I have found (I have tried an apple tv, roku, nexus player, fire tv). And is implemented extremely well. The fact that it is attached to the android ecosystem should also deliver a lot of independent innovation quickly. For example, there is already a video conferencing app available for the device (Tellybean - have not tried it yet). And has all the advantages of the google infrastructure behind it (for example shield has by far the best voice search recognition – nexus should be as good but I think they use a cheaper mic solution). Looking forward to seeing this open TV platform grow. Gaming: First I’ll state that I am a PC gamer. While I have an older PS3, for the past 4 years or so I’ve only played on a PC (better graphics, wider ecosystem of games and more flexible imo). Second, while shield tv does many things great in gaming, it does not replace the dedicated console for some gamers. I’ll explain. There are essentially 3 ways to game on shield tv. Local games, gamestreaming from your PC (works great! But requires a GeForce card in your PC), and GRID (gaming in the cloud). If you are a gamer who is focused on today’s AAA games and you do not have a GeForce enabled PC (you only play on a console), this product won’t replace your console yet. If you are a gamer who has a GeForce PC or you are a gamer who wants to play last year’s AAA titles or you are a gamer who wants to play android games then this product can easily replace your console. I’ve tried all 3 game methods on shield and my impressions are as below. *Local games – every android game I have tried runs like butter (as one would expect) including Talos. From NVIDIA’s launch event, I see many more high end titles coming (Borderlands TPS, Crysis, etc). I doubt any other android platform will be able to run these games at playable frame rates. I can’t review them yet as they aren’t available but looking forward to the android gaming ecosystem to move up in quality. I would advise getting the Pro platform with the HDD if you plan on downloading a lot of higher end local games (or can use an sdcard/usb harddrive in most cases – but has some limits). My wishlist here is to get these (and more) games released! *Gamestreaming – works like butter over my home network. Lets me play all my pc games locally on the big screen. Quality/latency are great. If you are looking for a path to get latest AAA content in the living room without the PS4/XB1 then this is the way for you. I’ll note that for games I like to play, the PC gaming ecosystem is bigger (and cheaper) for me. Don’t see any need for improvement here. *GRID – works well but needs reasonably good ping times. I do see this as the future of gaming. I have 20mbit service. For me this delivers 720p gaming fairly well. There is minor hitching (looks like only 1 or 2 frames) every minute or so but certainly playable and no different than you get from local PC content when your settings are cranked up. Latency is good but not great (my ping times are in the 40-50ms range to ISP and generally 80-90ms to game servers). It is certainly playable/enjoyable. And video quality is quite good (game settings generally are cranked up). To be clear, my PS3 does still provide a slightly better twitch response than GRID – I suspect this is due to my network conditions. Also I learned you should not be doing large file downloads in the background while playing GRID. With all this said, this is actually my wife’s favorite feature of the product – GRID has a large selection of lego games – She has now fully taken over the living room - I expect I will see her again in a few weeks at this point :) And this is the other really nice benefit for GRID – the range of titles is pretty large and with a lot of wide gaming appeal (racing, family, etc). The other cool thing about GRID is the fact that NVIDIA will be upgrading my GeForce in the cloud as needed when new, more demanding games come. My wishlist here is threefold – (1) I wish I had consistent sub-30ms ping times (i.e. I wish I had a better ISP), (2) More GRID datacenters (get me closer to the datacenter for lower ping times), (3) Lets get the latest AAA content up on GRID! (Witcher3???). Bottom line, if you have reasonably good ping times to a GRID server and acceptable bw (I know 20mbit works well) GRID rocks. I just realized I have not tried out any of the game capture/twitch services. I don’t normally use these but I believe product also supports broadcasting your gaming as well. I should also add that I am using a netgear R7000 router on 5GHz band. I also briefly tested 2.4GHz band and wired Ethernet. Video experience was same across all 3 configs as far as I could tell. I did see differences with gaming. 2.4GHz generated a few stutters with gamestream and even more with GRID. While Ethernet gave the best experience all around. Overall product is great today (as evidenced by my 5 star review). There are still small improvements that can be made (mostly on the app side as detailed above) – if I could give a 4.8 star review I would :) And you do need a reasonably good network connection to get the most out of GRID (low and consistent ISP ping times). But this is the first device that I think I can do a full cord-cut without any significant compromises. And it is a great family/casual gaming platform as well (is now my wife’s favorite gaming platform). Two quick notes on my update: 1) Take the software update as soon as you unpack and plug in. I didn't do this on my second unit and was wondering why I didn't see netflix (and saw some crashes which I did not see on my first unit) until I took the update. 2) There are more games for shield available through the nvidia game store than are showing in the google play store. Don't know why since the game store sends you to the play store. Just know that a lot of the high end games are only showing up through the nvidia game store icon. Update2: Tablo Tablo works great with the device as well (and tablo has the DVR function today with a harddrive). Quality of tablo video is very good (a bit better than hdhomerun). But tablo does not integrate into live channels app yet and the channel switching is a bit slower. Nor does tablo have the cablecard option that hdhomerun has (but I don't use this). Highly recommended.