[Tinwarble]

Thinking about it the Pro was effectively still a first gen box wasn't it ? Only the 16GB model was re-engineered to make it smaller (and losing the uSD slot in the bargain)? I guess retiring the Pro means stopping first gen production?

Thanks for clarifying about the TX2.  It's always annoyed me that there wasn't support for decent video and video decode driver support under Linux for the TX1 other than gstreamer.  The TX1 dev board would have made a nice high-end Kodi box in a suitable case. 

Well effectively, there is no 1st gen/2nd gen Shield TVs. Basically you had 16GB Shield TV in a Pro container and the 2017 models were just a relaunch of the 16GB in a smaller size with some I/Os removed. Other than that there's really no difference between the 2015 & 2017 16GB Shields, so to call them a "2nd gen" is a stretch.

Basically Nvidia (most likely) decided to stop production on their lower selling device and with the recent changes for the 16GB model, adoptive storage & being able to use it for PMS now, the Pro has become redundant.

As for the TX1 dev board, I don't think it would have been a nice "high-end Kodi box". Again, it was never designed for media, plus it's way to expensive for most people and if you want linux you can already do that with the Shield. There's some instructions on how to dual boot the Shield with either mobile Android or Linux floating around.