5 reasons the Nvidia Shield TV is still excellent

[MUSIC] Hey, these are my top five reasons the NVIDIA Shield TV is awesome. The Shield TV is a media streaming box that's become my go to streamer at home. Now I'm not saying that any other box is awful. The Apple TV and Roku have great features too They are also in my home theater set up. I am just letting you know, what's still so great about an android TV box that was released two years ago Number five Expandability, there are two versions of the shield TV, the pro edition has a 500 gigabytes hard drive built in. The regular SHIELD TV ships with just 16 gigs of storage. But you're not locked by down by that. There are two USB ports that support hard drives. If you want a an eight terabyte drive attached to your SHIELD, you can do that. This becomes really important if you've got a large library of movies, tv shows, music, and games. Like I do. Number 4. It's really fast. So get this, I just had a conversation with CNET's resident TV and streaming guru, David Katzmaier. He explained that the current gen of the Shield TV is no different from the first generation version, other than a few ports and physical size. That means that four years ago NVIDIA packed some crazy power into the Shield. The two year old model is using the same internals and it's still super fast. Apps and videos load quickly on the Shield TV. I'm a big fan of that because I'm impatient. Number 3. The google things the shield runs Android TV. You might be thinking where else can I use Android TV. Some Sony TV. Yes. Does Google make an Android TV box right now. No. Although that might be changing in the future, Android TV is actually pretty solid. All the major apps for streaming video like Netflix Amazon and Hulu are their. Shockingly, the YouTube app is excellent. The shield the TV also comes with Chromecast built in. So if you want to cast up from Chrome or your phone, go for it. There's also Google Assistant built in. There's a lot of Google and that Nvidia [INAUDIBLE] [MUSIC] There's a Plex Media Server built in. I've got a big collection of movies and TV shows on a hard drive. I'm not gonna explain how I got them. I used to have a dedicated media server in my home that gave me access to my stuff from anywhere Then it died. When I was looking for a replacement, I was surprised to see that there was a media box with lots of media server built in. The Shield TV made it really simple to resurrect my media server, a low powered device. [MUSIC] Before we get to number one, let's talk a little bit about what's not so great about the Shield. Trying to transcode videos on the Plex media server, on the SHIELD, is less than wonderful. The price is also high at around $190. If you see it on sale for less on a black Friday or something, the SHIELD TV is a lot easier to purchase. Not every app is great. The Hulu app is lousy. There's no support for Hulu profiles or live TV, or premium add-ons. I tweeted to Hulu about adding features, and here was their response. We don't have any information to share about that at this time, but we're always working to bring profiles and live TV To more devices/platforms. For now, we'll make sure your interest in Android TV support reaches the right teams at Hulu, fantastic. Number one. Here''s what makes the Shield awesome for me, its gaming. When you get the Shield TV, you get access to NVIDIA's GEFORCE NOW streaming game service. You can a pretty good selection of games without paying a penny, including a version of Streetfighter. GEFORCE NOW also lets you play some games you've purchased on [UNKNOWN] I still really love playing video games but that fell to the side over the years. The Shield TV was a nice way to get me back into that. Also, if you love playing retro games, the Shield TV can become a great emulation machine, remember to check your local laws to see what's legal regarding video game emulation. Let me know what you have attached to your TV or you're an Apple TV fan or [INAUDIBLE]. Fire streamer. I'm Iyaz Akhtar, and I'll see you online. [MUSIC]