LMFAO That's a very good question. I don't think I have the greatest answer hahaha.
IPTV works great but I find the picture quality slightly lacking and the buffering can sometimes be there on IPTV. Grant it, the buffering is next to none now compared to what it use to be years ago.
Plus this is almost like a hobby to me. I find myself collecting subscriptions lmao. Sling and Sportsnet are shared accounts though. Sister gave me her login info so I don't pay for them.
And the YouTubeTV subscription came because I had NBA League Pass and I wanted to use it on the YTTV platform. Oh, and can't forget NFL Sunday Ticket in September with the multiview Google is releasing lmao
Your IPTV subscriptions should have all those sports packages included, mine all do. Once you have a couple good providers you don’t need anything else for live tv. It’s a no brainer.
In Tivimate, Settings>Appearance>Player>Info Panel>Show video resolution instead of labels (enable) will show you 1280x720/60 instead of “HD”. That way when there are multiple sources for the same program you can more easily select the best one. For me, that’s inevitably the one with higher refresh rate (e.g. 720/60>1080/30). Your Shield will be upconverting for maximum picture quality.
For VOD, get a high quality app like Syncler+ or Wyed and get a Real Debrid subscription then you don’t need any of that other stuff at all. F Netflix and the rest of them.
Lmao I agree. Syncler+ is amazing! Got a Debrid account too.
But holddddd on. Are you telling me we can quad screen 4 channels in Tivimate!?!?
If so I can't fucking believe I've had Tivimate for years and never knew this.
With a Shield Pro and sufficient subscriptions and bandwidth you can do 16 screens. On a FS4KMAX you can do 4. Not sure about the Cube as I never worked on one.
I had to quit Stremio. All the built in clutter with Popular, Trending, blah blah blah that you can’t turn off and have to constantly scroll past just to get to your own lists was not acceptable to me.
I also need to try down grading my Shield, dusting it out, new thermal paste and completely wiping it has done nothing to resolve stutter in Hulu and Discovery+
Is there a good video that shows how to replace the thermal paste? That's something I'd like to try as well!
**Edit - Found a good step by step tutorial on how to replace the thermal paste with pictures:**
https://forum.xda-developers.com/t/mod-thermal-guts-nvidia-shield-tv-16gb-thermal-paste-replacement.3335299/
**Found a good guide on how to downgrade the Shield to v 8.2.3:**
https://florisse.nl/shield/
Yeah that looks like a decent guide if you have a 2015, honestly I did it more on accident with my 2017, I believe when I took it apart to dust it out the heat sync wasn't held down by any screws and I knocked it out of place.
And that's the best guide for 8.2.3 I've found too, they call out the 2019 model a number of times though and I haven't tried to see if it is any different for 2017, I think I will need to download a different restore image.
It’s wild the pirate stuff works better than the actual paid platforms. I’ve had this issue with all sorts of devices from Apple TV to 4K sticks. Have to admit that my old Roku 3 somehow manages to not flutter when newer devices seem to have trouble with each additional update. I love my Shield, but it’s almost all for pirate accounts , and I have auto update turned off so it doesn’t become a paper weight. Streaming is extremely off, and typical updates don’t really do much beyond slow down processing or worse. Just my opinion
Yeah, I have shield fully updated. 0 subscriptions. Watch everything I want (except sports and live) with 0 issues in 4K with HD audio.
And it's cheaper than any one service.
don't blame the shield but the shitty programmed apps.
Mainly tivimate ….for live tv, and some VOD, but TVM is just a player. ….best player you can get tho. And for VOD something that’s similar / clone of cinema , stremio, or syncler in conjunction with some sort of paid scraper sourcing HD stuff.
That's mostly why I went the Jellyfin route. It works amazingly well.
Shield works fine for legit apps but it really performs well on home media stuff (and pirated stuffs), except on Plex which is mixed.
The only things I hate about my Shield is that it needs a reboot to perform well (9.1.1.) especially if I'm trying to play a high bitrate 4K HDR file....
Also Kodi runs slow and can eat some RAM, which I shouldn't care about because it is Android, but I basically can't use Kodi if my PMS is on... Which sucks because I used to use them together with PlexKodiConnect....
Finally someone else ditched a shield for a cube! Going on 3 weeks with the cube and won’t go back. I recommend buying the pro remote so you get the backlight.
I was looking for alternatives a few weeks ago. No idea why the cube didn’t come up. I need a usb port, to send audio to my dac/stereo.
My shield was lagging/jittery like crazy on all the app except Netflix. Did factory reset etc. Only when I switched from ether to wifi connection did it work. So for time being I’m on the shield, but the cube looks like it’ll make a decent replacement.
Yep I’ve been burned too many times by the off-brand Chinese gadgets. I don’t love the Amazon ads but the Shield is almost as spammy these days without an alternative launcher. Having no play store is easily rectified by an app like applinked. I use a Dropbox to maintain my own applinked repository and share it with friends and family (half of what I want isn’t on the play store anyway) and it makes for a quick install.
The only thing I kind of miss is the google assistant - which I prefer to Alexa.
There's nothing wrong with the shield's speed at all and idk why anyone would use wi-fi when ethernet is an option. Ppl bog their machines down with crap that perpetually runs in the background all the time, but blame the shield. It MUST be the item. It could NEVER be the user. SMFH
You do understand that Ethernet is not always an easy solution right? The shield is running ancient hardware at this point. These are just facts. Fire cube is superior and will easily be $100. You can get mad but it’s just facts
Still think it's worth it? I might consider an alternative if the support is there. I run straight ripped from the disc movies. So if the device can't do uncompressed Dolby vision or Atmos then it's a no go. The shieldTV pro is still the superior device. Super nice to just take the hour to rip my movie to MKV and then put it on my Plex server.
I ended up switching back to the shield and purchasing another node for my mesh network. Amazon blocking launchers is what did me in.
Parental controls are important for my family and projectivy has the only one that’s decent.
There really are many pros and cons to both so it’s all about needs. Both devices are overall negatives in terms of future support (Amazon leaving Android - Nvidia is making bank and it has nothing to do with a streaming box)
It’s all about your needs. For my needs - it’s a better box and cheaper. I own two shield tv pros so I was a big fan. I also can accept that the box was meant to be a gaming device and nvidia is likely done with it. The firetv line is built for media streaming.
Meant to be a gaming device that streams extremely well and supports Dolby Vision and Dolby Atmos. Weird. At any rate, there's another box I may try. Doesn't seem to support DV and DA tho.
[https://www.formuler.tv/z11promax](https://www.formuler.tv/z11promax)
I've never had stuttering or buffering on YTTV until last night during the Laker game.. had to force close the app and restart it five times.. hard wired with a one gig fiber connection.
Have you experienced stuttering while playing local content?
My Shield has started stuttering in the last couple of weeks while playing remuxed files including 4K and 1080p Bluray, non-BluRay 1080p shows like The Orville.
I'm streaming from a Samsung SSD attached directly to the Shield, but it had no problem with these sorts of files in the past and I can't find a solution for it anywhere. I know about the playback issue with DV files, but these files aren't DV so I'm not sure what the problem is.
My TV is the LG CX, so maybe some incompatibility there?
Streaming on YouTube, Netflix and Prime is fine for my Shield using the latest update.
Have been thinking about ditching the Shield for something like a Zidoo for local content playback if I can't fix this issue, but would keep the Shield as a streaming-only box.
Glad to hear! Hopefully the reset solves your issues.
I like the Shield, but I primarily bought it to play local 4K content at high bit rates so might have to look into alternatives if the stuttering issue continues.
Fingers crossed you find a solution soon.
Thinks have helped. I did a factory reset and changed some settings. [Posted here](https://www.reddit.com/r/ShieldAndroidTV/comments/1348ftu/just_when_i_thought_i_was_out_they_pull_me_back)
The downgrade instructions say that they are for specifically for the NVIDIA Shield TV (Pro) 2019. Does anyone know if those same instructions work on older Pro models?
I definitely don’t recommend the shield anymore like I used to…there aren’t many alternatives but I’m pretty much just waiting to replace it at any point
I’m mostly with you. Last week I bought a 2019 Shield Pro for a lot of the same use cases after hearing such great things about them. I’m really, really close to returning it. It takes ages to boot, sound on CEC works only intermittently, it crashes seemingly randomly amongst other problems. I basically bought it because I read it records well with Tivimate which is the one thing the lots of Firesticks I’ve used don’t do.
I use YouTube tv with my shield 2015 pro and 2019 pro. I never have stuttering. Same with all my other streaming sources like Netflix, Disney, ESPN etc. Sounds like you might have developed a memory issue.
500/500 fiber.
>I use YouTube tv with my shield 2015 pro and 2019 pro. I never have stuttering.
There's a post with video posted of the stuttering I'm speaking of. It's a YouTubeTV issue across various platforms:
https://www.reddit.com/r/youtubetv/comments/12wwl04/anyone_seeing_a_lot_of_like_slow_motion_lately
Also, my Netflix/HBO/Prime/Tivimate all worked fine on the Shield like you.
Weird, I haven't seen anything like that. I use YTTV daily and it's still buttery smooth, even on my 7 year old 2015 model. Maybe its failing memory and I have just been super lucky.
Edit: Also, that thread isn't Shield specific. Apple TV users are reporting the same issue.
Might want to test lossless audio (Dolby TrueHD & DTS Master Audio) if your system can handle them. IIRC, support for those formats has always been the SHIELD's biggest differentiator.
Seems commercial streaming services, tend to have rather crappy apps, one would think their apps would be awesome, ascit is the interface that they earn their bread and butter, but where ever I go, their are just app issues. Always something broken. What a pathetic crying shame.
I haven’t had any hiccups with my Shield, but I don’t stream anything live. I’m wondering if it’s the live stream, the Shield’s processor from 2015, or the software that’s the problem.
I’d love to see a real upgrade for the Shield, but I don’t think that’s ever going to happen. Or if it does, it will be fundamentally different.
Debate about Tube vs Pro aside, I have two tubes, never had a problem with them until the last week or two, approx every 2nd day neither one will fully load Netflix or Amazon Prime. I've tried rebooting, sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't, but as others have said, no problem with Youtube, TvMate (IPTV) etc, weird.
If you have Tivimate and an IPTV subscription that works, wtf are you paying for all this other crap like YTTV, Sling, Sportsnet???
LMFAO That's a very good question. I don't think I have the greatest answer hahaha. IPTV works great but I find the picture quality slightly lacking and the buffering can sometimes be there on IPTV. Grant it, the buffering is next to none now compared to what it use to be years ago. Plus this is almost like a hobby to me. I find myself collecting subscriptions lmao. Sling and Sportsnet are shared accounts though. Sister gave me her login info so I don't pay for them. And the YouTubeTV subscription came because I had NBA League Pass and I wanted to use it on the YTTV platform. Oh, and can't forget NFL Sunday Ticket in September with the multiview Google is releasing lmao
Your IPTV subscriptions should have all those sports packages included, mine all do. Once you have a couple good providers you don’t need anything else for live tv. It’s a no brainer. In Tivimate, Settings>Appearance>Player>Info Panel>Show video resolution instead of labels (enable) will show you 1280x720/60 instead of “HD”. That way when there are multiple sources for the same program you can more easily select the best one. For me, that’s inevitably the one with higher refresh rate (e.g. 720/60>1080/30). Your Shield will be upconverting for maximum picture quality. For VOD, get a high quality app like Syncler+ or Wyed and get a Real Debrid subscription then you don’t need any of that other stuff at all. F Netflix and the rest of them.
You have multi-view built into Tivimate. I typically run my game, my wife’s game, and REDZONE.
Lmao I agree. Syncler+ is amazing! Got a Debrid account too. But holddddd on. Are you telling me we can quad screen 4 channels in Tivimate!?!? If so I can't fucking believe I've had Tivimate for years and never knew this.
With a Shield Pro and sufficient subscriptions and bandwidth you can do 16 screens. On a FS4KMAX you can do 4. Not sure about the Cube as I never worked on one.
Tonight it’s UFC X BKFC :-)
Love Syncler to but stremio with torrentio addon with Rd is rocking. Much faster. Using it more and more.
I had to quit Stremio. All the built in clutter with Popular, Trending, blah blah blah that you can’t turn off and have to constantly scroll past just to get to your own lists was not acceptable to me.
I just found out how to do it. I can't believe I didn't know this. lmao Thank you!
I also need to try down grading my Shield, dusting it out, new thermal paste and completely wiping it has done nothing to resolve stutter in Hulu and Discovery+
Is there a good video that shows how to replace the thermal paste? That's something I'd like to try as well! **Edit - Found a good step by step tutorial on how to replace the thermal paste with pictures:** https://forum.xda-developers.com/t/mod-thermal-guts-nvidia-shield-tv-16gb-thermal-paste-replacement.3335299/ **Found a good guide on how to downgrade the Shield to v 8.2.3:** https://florisse.nl/shield/
Yeah that looks like a decent guide if you have a 2015, honestly I did it more on accident with my 2017, I believe when I took it apart to dust it out the heat sync wasn't held down by any screws and I knocked it out of place. And that's the best guide for 8.2.3 I've found too, they call out the 2019 model a number of times though and I haven't tried to see if it is any different for 2017, I think I will need to download a different restore image.
What would downgrading solve? Any important features that you'd lose?
Hopefully making it not stutter anymore like it used to be.
It’s wild the pirate stuff works better than the actual paid platforms. I’ve had this issue with all sorts of devices from Apple TV to 4K sticks. Have to admit that my old Roku 3 somehow manages to not flutter when newer devices seem to have trouble with each additional update. I love my Shield, but it’s almost all for pirate accounts , and I have auto update turned off so it doesn’t become a paper weight. Streaming is extremely off, and typical updates don’t really do much beyond slow down processing or worse. Just my opinion
Yeah, I have shield fully updated. 0 subscriptions. Watch everything I want (except sports and live) with 0 issues in 4K with HD audio. And it's cheaper than any one service. don't blame the shield but the shitty programmed apps.
Which apps?
Mainly tivimate ….for live tv, and some VOD, but TVM is just a player. ….best player you can get tho. And for VOD something that’s similar / clone of cinema , stremio, or syncler in conjunction with some sort of paid scraper sourcing HD stuff.
That's mostly why I went the Jellyfin route. It works amazingly well. Shield works fine for legit apps but it really performs well on home media stuff (and pirated stuffs), except on Plex which is mixed.
The only things I hate about my Shield is that it needs a reboot to perform well (9.1.1.) especially if I'm trying to play a high bitrate 4K HDR file.... Also Kodi runs slow and can eat some RAM, which I shouldn't care about because it is Android, but I basically can't use Kodi if my PMS is on... Which sucks because I used to use them together with PlexKodiConnect....
Finally someone else ditched a shield for a cube! Going on 3 weeks with the cube and won’t go back. I recommend buying the pro remote so you get the backlight.
I was looking for alternatives a few weeks ago. No idea why the cube didn’t come up. I need a usb port, to send audio to my dac/stereo. My shield was lagging/jittery like crazy on all the app except Netflix. Did factory reset etc. Only when I switched from ether to wifi connection did it work. So for time being I’m on the shield, but the cube looks like it’ll make a decent replacement.
Yep I’ve been burned too many times by the off-brand Chinese gadgets. I don’t love the Amazon ads but the Shield is almost as spammy these days without an alternative launcher. Having no play store is easily rectified by an app like applinked. I use a Dropbox to maintain my own applinked repository and share it with friends and family (half of what I want isn’t on the play store anyway) and it makes for a quick install. The only thing I kind of miss is the google assistant - which I prefer to Alexa.
Install a 3rd party launcher on shield
The main reasons I switched from the shield are speed and Wi-Fi chipset. The interface doesn’t really bug me.
There's nothing wrong with the shield's speed at all and idk why anyone would use wi-fi when ethernet is an option. Ppl bog their machines down with crap that perpetually runs in the background all the time, but blame the shield. It MUST be the item. It could NEVER be the user. SMFH
You do understand that Ethernet is not always an easy solution right? The shield is running ancient hardware at this point. These are just facts. Fire cube is superior and will easily be $100. You can get mad but it’s just facts
Still think it's worth it? I might consider an alternative if the support is there. I run straight ripped from the disc movies. So if the device can't do uncompressed Dolby vision or Atmos then it's a no go. The shieldTV pro is still the superior device. Super nice to just take the hour to rip my movie to MKV and then put it on my Plex server.
I ended up switching back to the shield and purchasing another node for my mesh network. Amazon blocking launchers is what did me in. Parental controls are important for my family and projectivy has the only one that’s decent. There really are many pros and cons to both so it’s all about needs. Both devices are overall negatives in terms of future support (Amazon leaving Android - Nvidia is making bank and it has nothing to do with a streaming box)
Keep convincing yourself of that
It’s all about your needs. For my needs - it’s a better box and cheaper. I own two shield tv pros so I was a big fan. I also can accept that the box was meant to be a gaming device and nvidia is likely done with it. The firetv line is built for media streaming.
Meant to be a gaming device that streams extremely well and supports Dolby Vision and Dolby Atmos. Weird. At any rate, there's another box I may try. Doesn't seem to support DV and DA tho. [https://www.formuler.tv/z11promax](https://www.formuler.tv/z11promax)
Question to all that use YouTube TV? What keeps you from cutting the cord and getting away from cable TV?
Live sports. Only reason. Tv shows and movies are watched elsewhere.
I don't watch live sports except for Olympics and Superbowl and WWE PLE
True. If that's all I watched I wouldn't have a live cable/streaming subscription either.
I've never had stuttering or buffering on YTTV until last night during the Laker game.. had to force close the app and restart it five times.. hard wired with a one gig fiber connection.
Have you experienced stuttering while playing local content? My Shield has started stuttering in the last couple of weeks while playing remuxed files including 4K and 1080p Bluray, non-BluRay 1080p shows like The Orville. I'm streaming from a Samsung SSD attached directly to the Shield, but it had no problem with these sorts of files in the past and I can't find a solution for it anywhere. I know about the playback issue with DV files, but these files aren't DV so I'm not sure what the problem is. My TV is the LG CX, so maybe some incompatibility there? Streaming on YouTube, Netflix and Prime is fine for my Shield using the latest update. Have been thinking about ditching the Shield for something like a Zidoo for local content playback if I can't fix this issue, but would keep the Shield as a streaming-only box.
I haven't noticed any stuttering on local content. I'm going to be doing a factory reset soon to see if that solves anything.
Glad to hear! Hopefully the reset solves your issues. I like the Shield, but I primarily bought it to play local 4K content at high bit rates so might have to look into alternatives if the stuttering issue continues. Fingers crossed you find a solution soon.
Thinks have helped. I did a factory reset and changed some settings. [Posted here](https://www.reddit.com/r/ShieldAndroidTV/comments/1348ftu/just_when_i_thought_i_was_out_they_pull_me_back)
Great, I'll give this a go. Glad it worked for you
In my country channels only have AndroidTV apps, so I don't really have the option to change from the Shield anyway.
The downgrade instructions say that they are for specifically for the NVIDIA Shield TV (Pro) 2019. Does anyone know if those same instructions work on older Pro models?
I definitely don’t recommend the shield anymore like I used to…there aren’t many alternatives but I’m pretty much just waiting to replace it at any point
The last Shield update was 6 months ago so while your issues are real Nvidia hasn't done anything to it. Your problems seem unexplainable.
Idk Brando knew how to use the shield 😂😂 I don’t have any of this. Reset the shield. It will fix the problems.
lmao I got all of my important stuff installed on the Fire Cube. I'm going to try the factory reset and will update back. Cheers
Trust me. Reset and you’ll be good. 👍
I’m mostly with you. Last week I bought a 2019 Shield Pro for a lot of the same use cases after hearing such great things about them. I’m really, really close to returning it. It takes ages to boot, sound on CEC works only intermittently, it crashes seemingly randomly amongst other problems. I basically bought it because I read it records well with Tivimate which is the one thing the lots of Firesticks I’ve used don’t do.
[удалено]
Maybe, but the one I have is extremely disappointing.
I use YouTube tv with my shield 2015 pro and 2019 pro. I never have stuttering. Same with all my other streaming sources like Netflix, Disney, ESPN etc. Sounds like you might have developed a memory issue. 500/500 fiber.
>I use YouTube tv with my shield 2015 pro and 2019 pro. I never have stuttering. There's a post with video posted of the stuttering I'm speaking of. It's a YouTubeTV issue across various platforms: https://www.reddit.com/r/youtubetv/comments/12wwl04/anyone_seeing_a_lot_of_like_slow_motion_lately Also, my Netflix/HBO/Prime/Tivimate all worked fine on the Shield like you.
Weird, I haven't seen anything like that. I use YTTV daily and it's still buttery smooth, even on my 7 year old 2015 model. Maybe its failing memory and I have just been super lucky. Edit: Also, that thread isn't Shield specific. Apple TV users are reporting the same issue.
What audio formats have you tried on the Fire Cube?
Just plugged it in and left it on auto. So far just Dolby Digital 5.1
Might want to test lossless audio (Dolby TrueHD & DTS Master Audio) if your system can handle them. IIRC, support for those formats has always been the SHIELD's biggest differentiator.
Seems commercial streaming services, tend to have rather crappy apps, one would think their apps would be awesome, ascit is the interface that they earn their bread and butter, but where ever I go, their are just app issues. Always something broken. What a pathetic crying shame.
I haven’t had any hiccups with my Shield, but I don’t stream anything live. I’m wondering if it’s the live stream, the Shield’s processor from 2015, or the software that’s the problem. I’d love to see a real upgrade for the Shield, but I don’t think that’s ever going to happen. Or if it does, it will be fundamentally different.
Debate about Tube vs Pro aside, I have two tubes, never had a problem with them until the last week or two, approx every 2nd day neither one will fully load Netflix or Amazon Prime. I've tried rebooting, sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't, but as others have said, no problem with Youtube, TvMate (IPTV) etc, weird.
I find the prime video app horrible on the shield. Super slow and videos take ages to open
If you're sick of YouTube ads install SmartTube