There are so many options on the market, but I feel like they all miss one thing or another. As my current setup is about to kick the bucket, I'd appreciate some input on your experiences and thoughts on the future.
Below are my thoughts and opinions, that are completely open to scrutiny!
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The Nvidia Shield (and 2019 Pro) are aging and overpriced. Lacking software updates shows Nvidia's priorities on other product lines. Will there be a new version now that the Switch 2 is launched, or are the possible profits pocket change for them?
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Apple TV seems to be a great alternative, but it's a locked down ecosystem. Tailscale is available here now, which is great, but there is no way to side load apps AFAIK. I am not giving up ad-free Youtube. Other than that, I see very few downsides with it.
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Google TV Streamer 4K is basically a Chromecast with more memory, storage and a slight bump to the CPU. It does finally support AV1, but lacks support for many audio codecs and several relatively common DV-profiles. It has also more than doubled in price.
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We don't have Amazon, so I know very little about the Firestick, but I imagine it would be like the CcwGTV? Probably same with the Roku?
To be fair, I'm looking for something with a bit more snappiness and punch than a stick for future proofing.
What are your thoughts? Waiting for the Shield 2 Pro? Happy with Apple TV or Google Streamer?
I wanna know how you play your obviously perfectly legal content on your TV's, but it needs to have the WAF (Wife Acceptance Factor).
The server is a N100 NUC, so transcoding is no issue but I prefer not having to do it for everything.
Cheers!
The Vero.
It's the only open source offering, works great with 4k and HDR. Does use OSMC which I'm not a fan of but it works.
I've never heard of this and it looks pretty good. I'm in the "Boycott the US" mode so definitely will be avoiding Google devices if I can. What is it about OSMC that you're not a fan of?
It's kodi I'm not big on, it works fine but the jellyfin addon isn't fantastic for me, it frequently loses connection when using NFS, if not using NFS, I find it very slow to load media.
@HarngoMan
Does it also run something like Netflix, DisneyPlus etc.?
I think the product is really exciting, but I'd have a very hard time convincing by better half and kids that it's an upgrade, sadly.
I'll do some more reading on it before I purchase anything else though, so thanks a lot for the input!