alt Hacker NewsWhat do you think of Nvidia Shield? I haven't tried it, but I think it should also belong to 2). It's clearly much more expensive than a FireTV, but as you say it shouldn't be subsidized by ads. As an Android device it should be more open than an Apple TV. While I recognize the near flawless UI and high hardware quality of most Apple devices, I disagree with their "golden cage" or walled garden approach.
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The Shield Pro is perfect for me and I have no reason to upgrade. Have mine downgraded and de-bloated using this guide [0] running a custom launcher. Like you said being Android and more open helps a lot.
I've had the same Shield for about 8 years and it's still going strong, has all the hardware decoding I need
I use the non-Pro version for 1080p streaming and have for years. It’s great, does what I want and gets out of the way. Some years ago they were forced by Google to use the standard AndroidTV UI instead of their own custom one, which means it now shows ads on the home screen (a carousel of “watch this on service X”), which are inoffensive enough I haven’t bothered to circumvent them. You can swap to your own custom UI if you want with some ssh futzing.
I see many people liking their shield, and with good reason it seems, but is it a worthy ecosystem to buy in to when it has not seen a new hardware revision since 2019?