NVIDIA’s Shield TV promised to be an Android set-top box for gamers, and in that sense, it delivered. The company first released it in 2015, but its updated version cut down on price by bundling the $50 remote in to make the base-tier $200 version more cost-efficient. Now they’re dropping that price down to $180, which is an even better deal.
(In the UK, the NVIDIA Shield has only been available with a controller. The basic remote-only version will be available from October 18th for £179.)
NVIDIA is keeping the $200 tier by bundling in its normally $60 controller alongside the included remote. Both of those lower-priced options come with 16GB of storage, though the $300 Shield TV Pro model increases that to 500GB. Otherwise, all the Shield set-top boxes have the same access to streaming services at 4K HDR quality.
I like this hardware but I just don’t see this being able to compete with big players like Apple, Roku, Amazon, and Google. I think the support is lacking from the major companies which will make getting this off the ground difficult.