Fuck me. You might be right, as I haven’t actually used the stock launcher since the big ad update years back.
I just remembered my original launcher having a lot of a Nvidia specific integrations, but I guess those could have just been bolted on at the system level.
I said Playstore Certified, and yes, they are mostly the same when you look under the hood, at least for those classes of devices, per generation.
Same, or similar SoC, with 2/8 (sometimes 2/16) specs.
Once you get up to the 4/32 range, you’re already looking around the same price (+/-) of a Shield TV.
Also, lol @ citing LTT, for anything. Just because a broken clock is right twice a day, doesn’t change the fact that it’s broken.
And for the sake of being fair, I didn’t even mention the 1/8 boards.
Yes, Google is an inextricably linked to all Google TV issues, but they didn’t force Nvidia to ruin the Shield TV’S launcher with ads, and other bloat.
At least, not as far as I know. If you have sources saying otherwise, I’d be happy to take a look.
As someone who owns both Nvidia Shield TV and standard cheap (Google certified) devices, all running Projectivy, it’s not really comparable.
The Shield runs smoother, has significantly less minor/annoying issues, and actually receives fairly regular updates.
Now, the new Chromecast with Google TV does get updates, but it doesn’t resolve the first two differences.
If you can’t afford, or justify the extra expense, for an Nvidia Shield TV, completely understandable. But don’t pretend that the user experience is the same, because it’s not.
I’d prefer AI cores, just like I prefer HW based AES instructions: present and up to my discretion as to how I choose to use them, or not.
Nvidia has destroyed the stock Shield TV experience with ads, but it’s easy to install custom launchers like Projectivy. The underlying system is still a privacy nightmare, but I don’t care that Nvidia knows what TV shows I watch.
I mean, I do care, just not enough to use something like Kodi as my primary TV interface. Maybe if I used any ad supported services I’d feel differently, but I don’t, so meh.
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I’m confused. Are you saying YOU can’t tell the difference, or that their is no technical difference?
Because, anecdotally, I’ve owned a variety of these devices, and I can absolutely tell the difference. Which sucks, because I bought cheaper devices hoping for reasonable parity of experience. I’m not saying my cheaper devices are bad, just that clearly the Shield TV performs better.
As to the actual specs, there is also clearly a real world difference between the bog standard Amlogic SoC (1/8, 2/8, 2/16), and the Tegra SoC.
It’s entirely reasonable to argue that the difference isn’t worth the extra cost, fine. But it’s dishonest to say there is no appreciable difference.
TBF I haven’t used the newer “low cost” Shield with the 2/16 Tegra SoC, so I can’t really speak to how it performs relative to something like Chromecast with Google TV.