I tried Channel's DVR and it's not great at all. In fact, it's kind of bad

#21

Where the live TV buffer is stored depends on the Original Quality Delivery setting for the client device (App Settings > Playback > Streaming Quality > Original Quality Delivery).

When Direct is selected, the live TV buffer is stored locally on the client device.
When Stream is selected, the live TV buffer is stored on the server, which uses the server-side Live TV Buffer (1, 2, or 4 hours) setting (Server Settings > Advanced > Transcoder > Live TV Buffer).

Protip: Use Stream while at home to place the buffer on the server if your streaming device’s storage is preventing you from pausing for a long enough time.

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#22

Cool, thanks for the info, no wonder the AI was giving both answers.

#23

This used to be quite controversial up until a couple of years ago. I guess the devs caved in and implemented a server side buffer. Wonder if that makes it possible to record a program from the beginning in case a user presses record at later time.

#24

No, it doesn't. It is really only helpful for devices with limited storage memory when watching live TV.

#26

There weren't any server side changes for this. It was just a matter of coming up with an understandable way to present (and a reason to add) a client side setting that leveraged the existing Live TV streaming mechanism that was already used for Original Quality Remote Streaming.

#27

I think you could argue that the experience is way worse on Android, but I really do not think it is, having both an Apple TV and an Android TV. I think the key differentiator is the multi-view feature I mean, I personally don't use that. I see how useful it could be for maybe someone who watches sports.

But they've been on a tear with Android lately, adding new features. They just added audio pass-through, which is absolutely great. The experimental guide is also fantastic. If they add Multiview to Android in a beta, that would basically close the gap between Android and Apple TV with Channels DVR at least for me.

Then I think I would probably sell my Apple TV. I would have no reason to hang on to it even for the minute features that are not supported on my Shield. I mean, the feature gap is really, I think smaller than most people make it out to be from what I can tell. The UI looks a little bit more dated, that's all but it's really just an Android style UI versus an Apple style UI. That's what I've noticed.

I would personally rather use my Shield with full pitch stream pass-through than an Apple TV. I also found that the picture quality is a touch sharper on the Shield and the audio quality is noticeably better. Especially having used the Apple TV for the last few months and then having the devs fix a couple of bugs with the Shield that have gotten it to the point where it works really great for channels now. I'm noticing the Shield is just a way better device in terms of sound and video quality.

Also I do believe this is somewhat of a troll post to begin with and OP has not good intentions coming into this. This is a really wonderful development team they really work hard to build a great product and if you have nothing nice to say don't say anything at all that's my opinion. I'm not directing that statement at you @speedingcheetah I was only replying to you regarding the disparity between Apple TV and Android TV which I agree Google TV itself is a mess but I think the beauty of Android is the ability to just go in with ADB and do whatever the heck you want swap out launchers tinker which you can't do with Apple TV there's no way to debug if something breaks. There's no way to do an ADB logcat and see what's going on if something breaks out on Apple TV because there's no logging.

I think if you want something that's just going to mostly work 99.99% of the time and you don't care about home theater level quality get an Apple TV. If you care about home theater and don't mind twiddling some knobs to get things up to par get a Nvidia Shield.

#28

Our family is pretty much all Android at this point, mostly Firesticks just because they are cheap (not the Vega sticks of course). The experience has been pretty good overall, except for the rogue, random channels that just keep showing up in the guide. It's like they consistently lose their sync with the server's enabled/disabled channels, and that is frustrating.

#29

It has been quite a few years now, but, the Shields have not really changed at all, few OS updates, but nothing major. Apple keeps their product up-to-date and is making newer models. Nvidia, seems to have zero plans to make a newer modern hardware Shield TV, and the current model from 2019 is on Life Support essentially. I overall, see Android TV/Google TV to be a dying thing. Will not surprise me to see Google kill it off some point in the next few years.

To me, the Apple TV produced much better picture quality and audio quality. Is very subjective and also highly dependent on your specific hardware setup and environment and tastes.

Audio pass through...for those who want un-touched bitstream to go to a AV receiver, sure, Shield offers that.
Apple TV, now has a "Continuous Audio connection" setting that uses a Dolby MAT connection(which is PCM with Atmos metadata), but, no, there is no direct pass-through.
I do not use a AV reciever, instead, a Headphone DAC that connects a set of Creative 2.1 PC speakers. I do not care about fancy surround sound, and the downmixing Apple TV natively does and my hardware, sounds much better to my ears than the Shield ever did.

Video quality, also, is just cleaner and crisp. Apple seems to have better upscale processing compared to Nvidia's. The Shields "AI" upscaling just uses a edge sharpen mask filter and looks like crap on lower resolution video. I also have never found any video player app that comes close to Infuse Pro on Android. (well, bare MPV on Android is best for playback quality and codec support, but is barebones UI, directory tree navigation, and you need to manually setup config, very clunky)

Again, all is very subjective.

Use what works best for you.

#30

They just released an interview in Ars Technica saying they're experimenting with new hardware.

#31

:rofl: They have said that a few times....

Their main push for the Shield TV was for it to be a "Gaming set top box" and a streamer. That...did not happen. Their handheld gaming device failed too.

Nvidia, now, is hyper focused on the AI Enterprise/Data-center thing and has no intentions to break back into the conusmer niche market of Gaming streaming tv boxes.

IF, they had not already fully stated their intentions to draw back production of consumer GPUs and focus on the data center...then, maybe, i would have a bit of confidence in any statment of them "experimenting" with a new Shield TV box.

The current model, shows its age. It struggles with modern formats and newer codecs. While Apple TV can play them fine.

This a snip from that ars technica article from Jan of this year.

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#32

This discussion has strayed a bit, and I believe the OP has lost interest -- so I'm going to close it out.

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#33