Quick question, what are the advantage or disadvantages to using the hardware video decoding option for the player on a Shield? Can’t find anything on it.
Cheers
There are some bugs in the hardware decoder when used with specific transmitters. It manifests as pixelation, and only happens on the shield. If you have this problem with your local station, then switching to software decoding will fix it.
Amazing, thank you for the prompt response. On some channels using software does appear to produce less pixelation. Hadn’t really noticed before when I was flicking between the two modes.
Cheers!
FYI. I haven't seen any of these issues with hardware mode for a couple of months on Shield so looks like it's fixed 
I have personal experience with this situation on my Shield device. The only OTA Channel I see this is on NBC. All my other channels play just fine. Switching to software decoding fixes it every time.
I just checked earlier today to see if this is fixed yet outside of using software decoding and for me it is not.
@Stuart_Fagg is in the UK and is referring to some H264 decoder issues which they did manage to fix finally.
However the mpeg2 decoding issues that @jasonmcroy is seeing are still present, and according to my contacts at NVidia that's an issue with the hardware itself and cannot be fixed with any software updates.
Here's what an nvidia employee said on their forums (https://forums.geforce.com/default/topic/1076537/shield-tv/pixelation-when-watching-certain-channel-s-/post/5945645/#5945645):
We unfortunately do not have an imminent solution as it's a corner case in the video decoder hw.
Yeah, that is what I recalled you saying before. I am happy that the channels team implemented the correct workaround on this because other apps just don't easily do this. I think you can do it in Kodi but the settings aren't easy to find. Channels just makes things super simple and easy!
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