Is a nvidia shield still the best? Are there others? I’d like to play various 4k HDR video files. Which one to buy? Any recommendations? Nvidia shield looks very much outdated but there’s nothing new.
What about plasma bigscreen? Would that be good? I’d just use it for jellyfin, the DE doesn’t matter much.
The shield pro 2019 is probably still the best overall, it’s not perfect as there are some weaknesses due to the age of its chipset, but for all the common formats used in Movies and TV it works perfectly, especially if you are playing full remux files, not re-encoded compressed video. Kodi runs very well, Plex runs very well, Jellyfin is mostly perfect too, but has some limitations in the current version.
Yes it supports HDR10 (not10+) and Dolby Vision, which covers 98% of all 4K blurays and TV shows, anything HDR10+ just gets played in HDR10 compatibility mode, if you TV doesn’t do DV it plays the HDR10 layer on 99% of files. There are some issues with HLG as it isnt properly supported but you don’t come across that format all that often and there is usually an SDR or regular HDR version available, if your TV supports manually activating HLG then it works fine.
Yes there is a minor colour bug in some DV content, no it isn’t the end of the world as some people make it out to be.
It is one of the only players that will give you full DTS:X and Dolby Atmos support, it has a very nice configurable upscaler for lower res content (AI upscale on low works excellently with minimal artifacts), it still has a lot going for it despite its age.
Also its easy to decrapify with ADB, you can easily configure third party launchers and other fun stuff.
Thx! That’s a great review. HDR10 compatibility mode sounds good, I assume it doesn’t make too much of a difference. And the HDR layer for DV is great as well.
Seconding the Shield, for all of the above plus Nvidia’s update commitment to it. IIRC the 2015 Shield is the longest continually updated Android device ever. I have a 2015, 2017, and a 2019 at my house, and a couple of 2017s at my parents’ place. I upgraded the older ones to the toblerone remote last year. All are still working great, and continuing to receive regular updates.