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I recently moved my Apple TV to another room (for Fitness+ use) so we started relying upon a Chromecast with Google TV. What a downgrade. It made me remember h

I recently moved my Apple TV to another room (for Fitness+ use) so we started relying upon a Chromecast with Google TV. What a downgrade. It made me remember how horrid AV components often were, where multi-second delays, slow loading, horrid transitions, etc, were just normal. The Chromecast Google TV device has a 4 core, 1.9Ghz device, yet it seems extremely underpowered. Having a beefy processor in an AV device is hugely beneficial. I don't want lag. I want everything to work effortlessly.

tootie 5y ago
My experience with streaming sticks or other micro devices is that they get super hot and degrade over time pretty quickly. A small brick like Roku Ultra is much more durable. Bonus points for having an ethernet port. I'm also a fan of the Roku remote with the headphone jack built in and TV volume controls.
ziml77 5y ago
The Nvidia Shield basically uses the same SoC as the Nintendo Switch. Yet somehow even though the chip is powerful enough to run 3D games, Android TV can't manage smooth 2D animations on it. As I said in another comment I switched to using the apps on my LG TV. That sluggishness was a huge reason why.
- minhazm 5y ago
  It's possible it's not powerful enough for a 4K tv if that's what you have. The Switch does 720p, or 1080p when docked. 4X the resolution is a big difference.
  - phendrenad2 5y ago
    Not in 2D it isn't. Sliding some 2D textures around a 4k screen should be easy for any GPU from the last 2 decades. Problem is likely the apps do silly things like (I'm guessing) load 8k textures and draw them in a tiny box, and then try to load 100 of these boxes at once every time you thpe a character in the search box. Just guessing based on blog post deconstructions of modern games and apps I've seen.
    - randyrand 5y ago
      memory bandwidth becomes a big concern at 4k. it’s not just bad programming sometimes.

tootie 5y ago

My experience with streaming sticks or other micro devices is that they get super hot and degrade over time pretty quickly. A small brick like Roku Ultra is much more durable. Bonus points for having an ethernet port. I'm also a fan of the Roku remote with the headphone jack built in and TV volume controls.

ziml77 5y ago

The Nvidia Shield basically uses the same SoC as the Nintendo Switch. Yet somehow even though the chip is powerful enough to run 3D games, Android TV can't manage smooth 2D animations on it. As I said in another comment I switched to using the apps on my LG TV. That sluggishness was a huge reason why.

minhazm 5y ago
It's possible it's not powerful enough for a 4K tv if that's what you have. The Switch does 720p, or 1080p when docked. 4X the resolution is a big difference.
- phendrenad2 5y ago
  Not in 2D it isn't. Sliding some 2D textures around a 4k screen should be easy for any GPU from the last 2 decades. Problem is likely the apps do silly things like (I'm guessing) load 8k textures and draw them in a tiny box, and then try to load 100 of these boxes at once every time you thpe a character in the search box. Just guessing based on blog post deconstructions of modern games and apps I've seen.
  - randyrand 5y ago
    memory bandwidth becomes a big concern at 4k. it’s not just bad programming sometimes.