[zak325]

Hi all, 

I understand there is a lot of the information I may be asking in the forums already but there are a few things I just wanted some input in to be crystal clear. I recently got a Nvidia shield (2017) as I wanted ATV and a decent plex server and I am really enjoying the shield as previously I was using a mi box which was a rollercoaster if I do say so myself. Before this I brought a Vero 4k (not plus) solely for Kodi purposes and I absolutely love it. But what I want to do is remove the amount of boxes and switching I have to do to watch different content and was wondering how well Kodi would work for me on Nvidia Shield. I guess the question is can the shield do the following that my vero does:

- connect through my sound bar and allow audio passthrough (something the mi box couldn't do)
- refresh rate and resolution switching, as I am under the assumption my tv should be doing the upscaling and not my box
- high quality upscaling and picture quality, I've read the shield has really poor picture quality and was wondering why that is? I have tested but not noticed the difference between my vero so will need to check again
- I watch a lot of 1080p and getting into 4k content but mostly remux (lower quality rips)


things not super bothered about:
- HDR as my tv doesn't have it and not looking to upgrade to it any time soon
- high audio quality, this is my soundbar (https://www.samsung.com/uk/audio-video/soundbar-k450/) not the fanciest so I am guessing those really high quality audio's don't matter

if anyone has any input or think that I should keep the vero or maybe the shield is fine for my setup let me know? would rather have just one box that does most of it or maybe I should keep both for different purposes. 

Thank you!
Zak

[DNKK]

When you are using refresh rate and resolution switching it does not matter if nvidia is bad at upscaling as it will not be upscaling your tv will be. Shield supports almost all audio passthrough so as long as you are connected directly to soundbar should nothave  problems. Connecting shield to tv and tv to soundbar using arc channel might be problematic as many tv does not support all the audio formats this way and it is hit or miss depending on the tv brand. If you watch a lot of 1080p content you I would recommend going into shield developer settings and enabling colormitery settings.

[wrxtasy]

They really are different platforms:

Shield uses a generic Android Kodi Leia release that has narrowed the gap slightly vs using a dedicated Linux Kodi software release.
Shield also does a whole bunch more because it uses an Android TV OS - with all of it's associated ATV Apps.

It really depends what a user needs for Kodi, and if they need Apps support.

Vero 4K runs OSMC which is a dedicated, optimised OS to run an optimised Linux (AMLogic) Kodi release as bug free as possible. That is it's primary laser focus.
Accompanying that is often personalised after sales support where you have direct access to the developers of the OSMC / Vero platform.

AMLogic Kodi will handle old video compression standards better than any generic Android Kodi release. Stuff like playback of old VC-1 and mpeg4 has had a bunch of bug busting Kodi and Linux Kernel work done to it when using those combos. Deinterlacing over the years has been far more reliable with AMLogic Kodi vs Android.

OS upgrades and Kodi image backup = Vero 4K wins easily. Android TV OS upgrades and updates can often become a complete nightmare.

Both have auto refresh and auto resolution switching which works around dull picture output problems if the media player itself were doing the 1080p > 4K picture upscaling vs using the 4K TV's hardware upscaler.
However that auto resolution switching is mostly for Kodi only.
98% of other Apps on the Shield will still have poor upscaled 1080p > 4K picture output quality because they have no auto resolution switching support.

[zak325]

Hi both,

Thanks for the replies helps massively. I actually went into Kodi on the shield and watched a few episodes and compared against my Vero. The picture quality is quite poor compared to the Vero and I'm not sure why. Shield is using latest Kodi with the GUI set at 1080p and the TV should be doing the upscaling. But it just looks a bit more blurry and washed out compared to the Vero.

Let me know if I'm missing something.

[Atavius]

Hi there,
I recently upgraded to 4K HDR TV and I had same dilema on whether I should go with Nvidia Shield(2017) or Vero 4K+ for my next streaming/local media playback player. Since for my old 1080p TV I used RPI with OSMC with which I had no issues so I naturally inclined to the Vero 4K+. Then I met my friend who was so kind to borrow me one of his Shields for testing. I really wanted to like the Shield mainly, because of the option to stream games locally from my PC, but after 2 weeks of testing it I cant wait to get rid of it and replace it Vero. From the IT person perspective the Android TV is a total mess. Just to name the few things from top of my head:

• SMB v1 in 2019?? are you kidding me?? Lets say I look away from fact that it is deemed as not secure even by MS, but the performance hit which you get for transfer speeds is so noticeable that even the my old RPI with just 100Mbit outperforms the 1000Mbit Shield. Yes you can reverse engineer it to make the Shield as SMB client a then you get support for SMB v2/3, but the point is that if you want local playback instead of streaming is to copy files to Shield from PC/NAS and not to the other way around.
  
• File permissions on external drives connected to Shield. Without rooting the box, if the app does not ask for permissions to write to external storage you can only write to NVIDIA_SHIELD folder and there is no way around it.
  
• Torrent apps are not stable at all. I tried several different torrent apps with remote controls and with each I encountered problems when either the remote UI or the whole server stopped working and only way around it was rebooting the whole box. This is extremely annoying considering that on unrooted box there is no way to reboot the box remotely. 
  
• There is no remote administration for the box or its apps, so you will be constantly running to the TV to configure something or to check what the Shield is doing.
  
• Using apps that were not build for Android TV without touchscreen is pain in the @ss, since most of the time Shield wont highlight on screen what you selected.  
  
• The touch sensitive controls on gamepad and remote are half of the time not working.
  
• The resolution switching while watching different kinds of media especially with HDR is a hit or miss with constant fiddling of HDMI output settings.
  
• Picture quality seems to be lacking even compared to internal player of the TV.
  
• Nvidia communication on support forums on what is actually a bug or feature that they will fix or add in the future is almost nonexistent.  
  

To be not so harsh I can say that the game streaming part (local or even the internet one) of the box works almost perfectly. The main problem is that for 200+ € box and considering the HW inside of it Shield should be way more versatile and have way better picture quality. The culprit here is in my opinion mainly the Android TV OS that is just laughable comparing to Linux and options that it brings when you go with cheaper Vero 4K+.  My conclusion here is to get Vero for media playback and if you want to stream the games get Steamlink either on your SmartTV (mine luckily supports it) or as separate box.