[Dark_Slayer]

I hope Steam releases an app for this device (in home streaming)

They may or may not release a real app, but there is a current workaround for this already

I use a Nexus Player to do most of what this box will do (for me) already by switching between Kodi and Limelight. I'll probably sell it and upgrade to this one in May (without even a thought if they actually release a $140 base model). Upgrades would be for actual potential for hd audio, 4k, hevc, gigabit

As of today, I run limelight on the Nexus with the sixaxis app to pair my DS3 controllers to it wirelessly (this kills the factory remote). Gamestream "compatible" game lists are less than what you'd expect. I have a mismash of games on my server in Steam, Origin, and Uplay. Gamestream picked up all my Origin games and a few Steam games. I added the Uplay games to steam

The default run of limelight will just have an icon for Steam (if you don't let GeForce experience scan for any games). That's pretty straightforward, but after I let it scan in some games the steam icon went away. The workaround to get it back if that happens is just make a desktop shortcut to "steam://open/bigpicture" and add it to the GFE games library. Nvidia lets you add anything this way. You could put in explorer.exe if you wanted to use the shield for remote desktop, but the steam shortcut does well enough for me. On the Nexus Player I have hardware decoding enabled for limelight. On my w8.1 server w/ gtx 660 I have hardware encoding enabled on the steam-IHS server side. You actually have to toggle that manually in steam. Gamestream from nvidia will default to hardware encoding with the NVENC, but steam will not unless you change the server side settings in big picture mode.

With NVENC hw encoding and the measly Nexus Player hw decoding I get 8ms (server) / 9ms (client) input lag. I'd bet that the Shield console has some optimization to make this even better, but it's already ridiculously good in my opinion. Looking at the limelight post in XDA, it doesn't look like all devices fare as well as the nexus

Except for the thousands and thousands (hundreds of thousands?) of people who don't require HD audio or even have compatible equipment. I have 4 TVs in my house, and only on one would it make sense to have external speakers.

I have a big long list of reasons to get the Shield Console, and HD Audio isn't on that list for me either. I'm genuinely surprised its on anybody's list.

I'm with you here. It's on my list for a ton of reasons, and the potential for HD audio is kind of a non factor. Nice to have but not a deal breaker. I'll own it either way

I'm not surprised to see people require HD audio, but I do get surprised sometimes when it seems like a minimum requirement for ANY box is hd audio passthrough. How many receivers do people have? I have one, but two other TVs in different rooms just running built in speakers. I only need one box to do hd audio passthrough

Don't assume that just because someone doesn't use "HD" audio doesn't mean they don't want a nice media/game system that has performance in other areas.

And I call bullshit EDIT: I doubt that the average person using "HD audio" is actually getting better audio quality. The quality difference between other high quality audio formats and the two HD audio formats is not very big, and most consumers will not be able to tell a difference in their setup.

(EDIT: err, I got a little worked up. Sorry)

I agree here as well, not that it's of much consequence but audio placebo goes along way. People felt the same way about their hd audio lights showing up on their receiver vs the ps3 decoding and sending lpcm (before the slim when the hdmi chipset was updated and enabled bitstreaming) - and in that case there was scientifically no difference in audio with the exception of a few receivers that clipped lpcm and/or didn't apply room correction to it