Drastic Workarounds
Sunday 11th September, 2022 22:01 Comments: 1
A while ago I bought an NVIDIA Shield Pro to replace my old Firestick, but it had issues displaying things properly with my AVR and Sony TV so I hooked it up to my computer monitor instead and eventually went with the Firestick 4K Max. The performance of the Max is significantly better than the older Firestick, but it had a few limitations such as only supporting Dolby audio outputs (I swear older Firesticks had better HDMI passthrough support, possibly before the 4K versions?). I was able to live with this until recently the Plex client stopped being able to play EAC3 (Dolby Digital Plus) files for some unknown reason. I gave Kodi a try, with the Plex add-on, but the interface isn't as good, and sometimes the audio played up for the entire Firestick due to how they output audio). I ended up forcing the Firestick to DD+ (instead of best available) and using a recent Maven build of Kodi (Kodinerds ARMV7a for Android) to get support for Dolby Vision (the FireTV version doesn't have support for DV, apparently). I did try the Nexus build, but that seemed to hang when trying to play anything. I was going to stick with Kodi(nerds), but a recent discussion with friends convinced me to try the Shield Pro again.
I'm pretty sure I gave up on it before 9.0 came out, and after upgrading to 9.1 it seems to behave itself quite well with my TV. However, I couldn't get Dolby Vision to work at 4K with a high refresh rate using the aux HDMI port on my Denon amp (it was on the front and convenient for testing). But after connecting to the 8K HDMI port on the Denon (admittedly with a different HDMI cable, although I did try three other high quality cables) I finally had the option for the top frame rates with DV. And it seems to work fine. Although I've now lost the option to remove the toggle DV option from Quick Settings so I guess it's there forever.
In the past I believe they sent rec. 709 over rec. 2020 which my Sony TV (which I think has been updated since then) wasn't a huge fan of. I think they might have enabled DV all the time too. And I'm pretty certain they didn't have any frame rate matching support. But it's all looking much better now (my Denon AVR also has been updated since then, mostly to try and resolve Dolby surround sound audio issues), and if things continue to work I can see myself using the Shield Pro and relegating the Firestick 4K Max to my computer monitor.
The NVIDIA Shield Pro might (finally!) be the best device for playing a wide range of media.
I'm pretty sure I gave up on it before 9.0 came out, and after upgrading to 9.1 it seems to behave itself quite well with my TV. However, I couldn't get Dolby Vision to work at 4K with a high refresh rate using the aux HDMI port on my Denon amp (it was on the front and convenient for testing). But after connecting to the 8K HDMI port on the Denon (admittedly with a different HDMI cable, although I did try three other high quality cables) I finally had the option for the top frame rates with DV. And it seems to work fine. Although I've now lost the option to remove the toggle DV option from Quick Settings so I guess it's there forever.
In the past I believe they sent rec. 709 over rec. 2020 which my Sony TV (which I think has been updated since then) wasn't a huge fan of. I think they might have enabled DV all the time too. And I'm pretty certain they didn't have any frame rate matching support. But it's all looking much better now (my Denon AVR also has been updated since then, mostly to try and resolve Dolby surround sound audio issues), and if things continue to work I can see myself using the Shield Pro and relegating the Firestick 4K Max to my computer monitor.
The NVIDIA Shield Pro might (finally!) be the best device for playing a wide range of media.
Robert - Sunday 18th September, 2022 12:23 I've been using the Shield Pro for a few days now and it seems to work fine. It's now the default streaming media player, and the next time I move the Denon I'll rip the Firestick 4K Max out the back of it. It's a perfectly decent device for most people, but the Shield Pro is the superior device - for the price it should be!