11 ms·

Nvidia's 10-year effort to make the Shield TV the most updated Android device

242 points by qmr 9mo ago

boricj 9mo ago
That reminds me of my own Samsung Galaxy SII. Shipped out of the box with Android 2.3, Samsung supported it up until Android 4.1, then I switched to CyanogenMod until my father rage-bought me a new phone in 2016 because it crashed so much he had trouble contacting me. I still kept it up to date with LineageOS and then unofficial versions for fun (it's at Android 13 last I checked). Do I expect a Samsung Galaxy SII to do as well with 2026 software as it did in 2013? No, but I can run a 2013 computer with 2026 software without needing to track down dodgy homebrews on xdaforums.com and that reflects badly on the smartphone ecosystem.
- joe_mamba 9mo ago
  >That reminds me of my own Samsung Galaxy SII. Shipped out of the box with Android 2.3, Samsung supported it up until Android 4.1 Even that was amazing for Samsung's standards back then. For example my former Samsung Note II shipped with Android 4.1.1 Jellybean and they only supported it till 4.4.2 KitKat. Just let that sink in. I basically bought a flagship e-waste device. Custom ROMs didn't help much since you'd lose S-pen functionality if you went past 4.4.2 as modders couldn't port the needed firmware blobs past that kernel or something like that. Oh, and also, using custom ROMs could brick your wifi from working as the FW of the wifi chip was tied to Knox tripping the e-fuse on custom ROMs, so then you'd need to use some voodoo to patch wifi back. That is, if you were lucky and your phone wouldn't brick itself due to the FW bug in Samsung's eMMC, that would lock itself to read-only mode out of nowhere. Seriously, fuck Samsung for that PoS phone, fuck them in the a**. That phone should have been a lemon recall with full refund to consumers.
  - AstroNutt 9mo ago
    I rooted my old S3 probably around 2016 I had laying around. There was an exploit called "let it rain" and that got me root access. Then on XDA Developers I found several custom ROM'S. Someone even created a Nougat ROM for that thing later on. That was the last version I was able to load on it. I sure did learn a lot back then.
drnick1 9mo ago
It's nice that you can unlock the bootloader on these and flash Lineage if you want to limit snooping by Google. That being said, I think that you get more flexibility and performance with a mini PC and and air mouse. For one, stock (Googled) Android does not give you an easy way to use a browser with an ad-blocker, which is still the best way to stream from many sources without ads. Also all these anemic Android boxes struggle with high bitrate 4K videos.
- aaravchen 9mo ago
  You unfortunately lose Widevine support when you do this though (either switching to LineageOS or a mini-PC). That means you can't stream any of the mainstream services in anything like a half-decent quality. It's very unfortunate that every streaming service has given up on supporting anything except Google-fied Android and Apple iOS/tvOS. I dont like the services to begin with, but a fully Jellyfin stack can only get you so far when there are niche requests involved as well.
  - drnick1 9mo ago
    > That means you can't stream any of the mainstream services in anything like a half-decent quality. Maybe, but I don't think it's a big loss, and the *arr suite works just fine as a substitute.
    - aaravchen 9mo ago
      That's the kicker I'm pointing out. It's a very limited number of people that agree. If you're satisfied with the equivalent of 6-12 DVDs worth of content, or are only pulling the latest of a handful of shows and deleting them once watched, that's about all most people's setups will be able to store. But just like when streaming first started, people appreciate the 100s of TB of content from the streaming services and usually want that level of access. I have 40+ TB on a >100TB system and we still use Netflix, HBO, or AppleTV+.
  - spockz 9mo ago
    At this point I actually don’t know why I bother with the streaming services anymore. I recently watched a blu ray movie after a long time of just watching streams and the quality of the picture just blew me away. Is there even Blu-ray level content available for series that are streaming only? Or is it restricted to just movie releases? Edit: actually, now that I think of it, having the audio available in our local language instead of English is a boon for the kids. But otherwise, I don’t know why we bother.
stuaxo 9mo ago
I'd buy one if they made a new one, but I guess thats basically the hardware the switch uses
- emsixteen 9mo ago
  This has me wondering if I can use my release Switch as an Android TV box
badsectoracula 9mo ago
Unfortunately it doesn't seem to extend to the other Shield products. My Nvidia Shield tablet hasn't had an update in many years. Then again, this is probably why it is still fast :-P I'm using it pretty much daily as an ebook reader and sometimes i use it to watch videos on bed by transcoding them on my PC (the hardware isn't that good to decode modern formats). Amusingly, these days i use it much more than back when it was new :-P. I keep it offline though (mainly to avoid wasting battery, there isn't anything in it i'd care if it caught malware by net osmosis somehow) and transfer files via a USB cable.
sgloutnikov 9mo ago
No thanks. Downgraded to 8.2.3 years ago and going strong with a custom launcher. Has absolutely everything I need and nothing that I don’t. This was the guide back then, possibly still works. [0] [0] https://florisse.nl/shield-downgrade/ https://florisse.nl/shield-downgrade/
- flixing 9mo ago
  this. anything above 9.x has been shit for me.
- Novosell 9mo ago
  I just removed updates from whichever app it is that handles the launcher, all ads gone, still get to be on latest OS version :)
  - wredcoll 9mo ago
    How?
    - Novosell 8mo ago
      On android you can, usually, go into the settings, go to the app section, go into the specific app you wanna downgrade and, if it's an app that comes preinstalled and can't be deleted outright, you get an option to "remove upgrades" or some such thing.
magicalhippo 9mo ago
I have one of them, and been using it daily since I bought it in 2016. Bought a cheap Bluetooth remote control from AliExpress which was an upgrade over the Logitech Harmony crap I had earlier. If it were to break, knock on wood it won't happen, what options are there? I have tried to look but haven't really found anything that is free of Chinese backdoors and has decent hardware. For just Plex or Jellyfin a N100 box or similar could do, but I want easy launch of HBO, YouTube etc. And I need that remote control option.
- VerifiedReports 9mo ago
  From what I've seen in forums where people asked this, the answer is: nothing. I only have two devices providing material to my media system: a Shield Pro and a Blu-Ray player. The Shield is the critical element, used daily for streaming and playing local media from a USB-connected SSD. I hope Nvidia revises the Shield with up-to-date hardware and maintains its flexible nature. It's a pretty cool product. The biggest shortcomings I've encountered are the fault of moronic media companies. Great example: Spectrum (the cable company). These dolts have an Android application with which subscribers can watch content. But it doesn't run on Android TVs. It's called "Spectrum TV." It's so gallingly stupid that I hate rewarding them with money every month. Oh, and I love how they addressed the goddamned Netflix button. If you so much as LOOK at the remote, Netflix launches in the middle of whatever you're watching. I actually removed the button from the remote entirely.
  - deleted 9mo ago
    [deleted]
  - scrollop 9mo ago
    Netflix button fix- Get the app "button mapper" (or similar name) On the free version, you can configure the button for- one click of the netflix button to open Plex, and 2 clicks to open something else (eg youtube). This also works when the shield and TV are off- One click of the netflix button turns on the shield, which turns on the tv.
    - 9mo ago
nevi-me 9mo ago
My 2017 model probably short circuited during a lightning strike, because it stopped working after a storm. My friend offered to sell me his 2019 but I thought there'd be new hardware. I should have bought it. I love the Shield, compared to even the Chromecast at the time, we noticed a huge difference in colour on the TV. If NVIDIA ever produce a refresh, they'll have my money.
- hgomersall 9mo ago
  But you can buy it now. I'm not sure what's different if you thought you should have bought your friends.
Midar 9mo ago
And yet, they dropped updates for my Shield Tablet basically immediately after I bought it…
zimmerfrei 9mo ago
> Nvidia released the first Shield Android TV in 2015 > it took about 18 months to [create] an entirely new security stack [...] Android updates aren’t actually that much work compared to DRM security, and some of its partners weren’t that keen on re-certifying older products. > In February 2025, Nvidia released Shield Patch 9.2 [...] That was the Tegra X1 [security] bug finally being laid to rest on the 2015 and 2017 Shield boxes. This is a real engineering marvel. Everybody else would have just given up entirely long time ago. DRM bugs are in most case practically unrecoverable for products that shipped already (and physically in the hands of the adversary). The incentive to tell to consumers "Ditch that product you bought from us 2 years ago, and buy the more recent hardware revision or successor" is extremely strong. This really feels like a platform that is maintained with pride and love by the nvidia engineering teams (regardless of one's opinion about DRM per se).
- altano 9mo ago
  They added auto-playing, full screen video ads to the home screen. I threw mine in the garbage. Pride and love, lol…
  - zinekeller 9mo ago
    > They added auto-playing, full screen video ads to the home screen. I'm pretty sure this is actually Google's fault (even Sony televisions suffer from this bullcrap). Unlike phone Android, Google TV (yes, that's the official name now) enforces certain "standards", one of them is this bullcrap.
    - School-Cotton 9mo ago
      My Sony TV doesn't do this, thankfully
      - sheepscreek 8mo ago
        My Samsung Frame TV shows ads in the app bar and you cannot disable/remove them. They can’t even use the Google excuse because the TV runs Samsung’s OWN TizenOS. They’re lucky it’s a good (beautiful) TV..
xchip 9mo ago
They updated it recently to fix the stuttering in the Disney app, and that issue had been there for a year or so. And they did that probably because Disney paid them. It's a corporation, they don't work for free.
ekianjo 9mo ago
Is this a paid PR piece? Because many other devices by Nvidia like the Jetson boards never get any long term updates.
sp3n 9mo ago
something else that is outstanding about this device is the support. a couple of months ago my 2017 edition kept restarting occasionally while watching a movie so i got in touch with nvidia support, after a bit of back n forth they agreed to send me a brand new power adapter for free which arrived promptly and completely fixed the problem
bergheim 9mo ago
I'm not even sure which one I have, it's old but it's great. Use it for streaming (smarttube, some apps) and moonlight/sunshine. It does 4k with a ps5 controller so well. Love it. I think it was like a 100 bucks 8 years ago? I use my desktop 5090 and basically stopped using ps5 for couch gaming because it looks so much better. Great value! Also, not that this is better probably (it is Google and Nvidia after all), but it means my Samsung TV is not connected to the internet, so I don't have to wait 10 seconds for the menu to come up because it is busy loading and injecting ads.
swiftcoder 9mo ago
This a company which routinely provides driver updates to their GPUs for 10+ years. I'm guessing that puts them in a different mindset from the get-go, to your typically smartphone vendor.
duxup 9mo ago
If I KNEW companies would do things like this, I'd be more likely to buy their product. But on the other hand I don't know who to trust because plenty say such things because it is easy to say then ... and then they just quit. It's part of the reason I like Apple devices.
JoshGlazebrook 9mo ago
The CEO actively uses the shield pro which im sure is part of it. I just wish they would release a refresh.
tempest_ 9mo ago
Now if only they would release an updated one.
- mrandish 9mo ago
  I'd love to buy a newer, better streaming box than the several I already have but after spending quite a bit of time investigating, the state of Android TV-based streaming boxes & sticks is awful. That's one reason NVidia's Shield (Tegra X1 SoC) is still well-regarded despite being a circa 2015 design (the 2019 rev was just a cost reduce/bug fix with the same performance). Beyond that your choices are to either stick with the same mainstream Google/Amazon/WalMart boxes which are locked down and based on 5+ year-old SoC designs or go with second-tier boxes from Asian vendors on AliExpress/Amazon/eBay, all of which have some different combination of significant compromises: * Don't work with certain DRM, streaming services or codecs * Has unreliable manufacturer support (certain firmware works with some DRM/services, next rev fixes one but breaks another) And even those are built on old hardware designs because there's been no significant advancement in set-top SoC performance for over 5 years. There are only a handful of set-top SoC makers (MediaTek, Amlogic, Rockchip, etc) and while they do occasionally introduce new chips, they mostly only update the video decoding block to support newer codec levels or DRM revisions while keeping the same ancient ARM CPU/GPU cores (or different cores with the same class of 2015-2018 performance). A good example is the Ugoos AM6B Plus box someone in this thread mentioned as an option for certain use cases. It's been verified to decode DV7 with FEL BUT only works well with local files, not streaming services. And the Amlogic 922x SoC in that box is 5+ year-old tech (I have the same chip in an Amazon Fire TV Stick 4k Max (2nd gen)). The hardware performance of these boxes has been essentially frozen in time due to a 'perfect storm' of factors: * Most consumers want the cheapest box they can get which plays the main streaming platforms (NetFlix, Amazon, Apple, Disney+, etc). As long as they get a picture of minimally acceptable quality, they don't know or care if the hardware/firmware/drivers properly support the better Dolbyvision levels or adds the enhancement layer or supports ICtCp color space, 12-bit tunneling through RGB or if it handles Source-Based Tone Mapping (SBTM) correctly. They also don't care about playing locally hosted files smoothly or horrendous latency in the Wifi/Ethernet driver stack that nerfs local game streaming. * DRM is a shit show. The big Hollywood studios require streaming platforms to use specific encryption. So the streaming platform apps will only playback streams on SoCs which have been officially certified (or they nerf the stream to 720p). The certification process is onerous, costly and time-consuming for SoC makers. * SoC makers, having run the certification gauntlet a couple times now, would like to do it again, approximately... never. On top of that mess, developing and maintaining firmware for their decoding block which properly supports the constantly evolving landscape of divergent codec levels, enhancement layers, color spaces, tone mapping, etc is hard, expensive and requires deep expertise across multiple domains. They just want to sell trays of cheap SoCs and see all the rest as a bottomless money pit eating their slim margins. NVidia did all this with the Shield and it's grandfathered in on the DRM and they've done a decent job supporting some more recent codecs, levels and layers where they can. But the Tegra X1 platform is 10+ years old now - yet it's still slightly more performant than any other DRM-certified SoC to this day, which just shows what a mess this is. Which is insanely frustrating if you understand technology platforms, care about actually seeing the full quality modern tech can deliver and would like to do so on a non-ancient hardware platform capable of other trivial things like locally streaming files with actual throughput >100mbps or streaming games with non-glacial latency. But that's just table stakes because the things which could be done with more modern hardware are super-interesting, like AI-based upscaling, frame gen, removing compression artifacts, reformatting content, on-device gaming, etc. But using standard small form-factor PC/GPU hardware is a non-starter because of DRM certification. So... it would be great if NVidia would make a new Shield based on the new Tegra. But that's a huge new effort and, sadly, NVidia would crazy to divert resources or wafers from the AI-bubble cash printer to anything else - so I highly doubt it's going to happen.
titaniumrain 9mo ago
honestly, shield tv changed how i interact with my tv and my opinion about Android TV (even though its market sucks)
- j45 9mo ago
  It is how Android should be across all devices.
2OEH8eoCRo0 9mo ago
It's ironic that Nvidia before becoming a behemoth had the money for this kind of device.
- j45 9mo ago
  They have been a public company for over 20 years.
  - 2OEH8eoCRo0 9mo ago
    Look at their valuation for those 20 years compared to today. What was their valuation 10 years ago?
    - j45 9mo ago
      Oh, I'm familiar with the valuation. They were able to build this device and provide a Android TV certified 4K device that didn't need to have planned obsoleteness.
      - Mindwipe 9mo ago
        I mean the main reason it exists is because. Nvidia spent a bunch of money designing and fabbing the Tegra for automotive use and nobody bought it so the project was desperate to find a customer rather than out of the goodness of their hearts. That's also why they sold it to Nintendo at a bargain basement price for the Switch. I strongly suspect the reality is that they had to give Nintendo so much money back due to the complete failure of the bootloader security that they still produce the Shield as Jensen still demands they claw their way back to break even.
      - 2OEH8eoCRo0 9mo ago
        Yes. And it's ironic that they can do this ten years ago but can't be bothered to make a new one today. I guess the old one still works well enough and people buy it though which the article states. Feels like a reverse Bell Labs approach. They find their cash cow and only invest in their cash cow rather than research new product areas and fields.
beastman82 9mo ago
I have had two for 10 years and have no complaints whatsoever
- akersten 9mo ago
  The lack of hardware support for a few modern codecs is a pretty big complaint from me, but nothing else out there is decent :/
  - safeimp 9mo ago
    It depends what you're looking for. In the AV enthusiast circles a lot of people flock towards the Ugoos AM6B Plus (with CoreELEC). It is one of the only devices (alongside Oppo clones) that can play Dolby Vision Profile 7 FEL (Full Enhancement Layer) with 100% accuracy. The Shield can play P7, but it ignores the FEL data; the Ugoos actually processes it. That said, people don’t generally use Android on it, instead you boot to CoreELEC from an SD card and use Kodi.
    - aaravchen 9mo ago
      The unfortunate part is that CoreELEC only works when you get all your content from a locally attached disk. You can't even really stream it from your beefy NAS/server, and you definitely can't use any streaming services. I'm constantly surprised how many people are in that narrow category of just dipping thier toe in the water for "self-hosted" content that it's little enough it fits on disk storage you can have in your living room (mine is a half-height server rack in the basement), but also have progressed past thr point of using any streaming services. I guess there are a lot of people without families that also never travel out there.
      - compsciphd 9mo ago
        I used it with plex (in kodi) just fine. With that said, I'd agree that its mostly for local media (where local can be whatever plex can get to). Outside of plex, either you are using plain kodi or some simple kodi extensions (say youtube) that just aren't as nice to use as their android app equivalents (in regards to streaming services, it does support MLB.TV for those that like baseball, but again, not quite as nice an experience IMO as the android app).
buu709 9mo ago
I've got the OG model, and it's still the main device hooked up to my TV. All my TV streaming goes through it (mostly Jellyfin these days), and it can stream games no problem via Moonlight. It's hooked up to a 4k LG TV, and I have no idea about how it does the upscaling, but 720p content looks perfectly fine on it. Best (worst?) of all... it still gets updates.
- pdntspa 9mo ago
  Yeah I just loved the one where they forced ads on the homescreen. Now I use ProjectIvy
  - BLKNSLVR 9mo ago
    +1 for Projectivy. After the ADHD-inducing default Android TV interface, Projectivy is just beautifully clean and simple. I have quite a few Android TV (or are they called Google TV these days?) devices, and they all get the Projectivy makeover. The TCL TV running Android needs some 'adb' commands run so that the users selection of launcher is maintained across reboots, bit other than that it's been smooth.
- Loughla 9mo ago
  The only two complaints about mine is the one set of updates about 5 years ago that killed every connection to my NAS, and that the auto skip function for credits doesn't know if there are scenes after the credits. But overall, for running it for like 9 years with a cost of less than $200 and essentially zero maintenance, the shield is awesome.
- j45 9mo ago
  I thought the Shield's claim to fame was it was a certified 4K Android TV device because it could handle it early on?
zdw 9mo ago
Shield TV + extra storage + HDHomeRun tuner is still a great device for getting OTA TV. The only downside is that more recent versions use the Google Android TV launcher which is filled with a garbage truck full of ads, often for things I would never want to watch (horror movies? Nope!). Yes you can replace the launcher, but that's a pain. Would love to pay more for a device that has updated codec support, no ads or tracking, and is basically identical.
- add-sub-mul-div 9mo ago
  I wanted to do this and got a Shield last year but returned it because of a live TV bug with the Android Plex client. The programming guide stopped working and could only be fixed by restarting the app, but on Android quitting to the home screen keeps the app running and you can't force quit without going into menus. Sadly that's the OS and changing a launcher didn't fix it.
  - aaravchen 9mo ago
    Actually you can double tap the home button on your remote to see all apps currently running, and can then click the close button on any one of them. Google TV apps leak memory like a sieve, so it's pretty common to need to manually close all other apps to make the one you're trying to use work. Even !y wife just dies of now as soon as any one of the apps starts acting up.
  - Grazester 9mo ago
    Yeah that's not how you close an app on the Shield as was pointed out.
- Forgeties79 9mo ago
  If plex was smart they’d sell a little box of their own and ditch all this faux-social media nonsense they’re slowly implementing. I do not care at all what my friends are watching. Not one bit. Just make it connect to servers. People are happy to pay for it clearly. How many beelinks have been sold just to run Jellyfin/Plex? I’d gladly buy a plex box for $100 - talk about a great Christmas present for friends and family! Sidebar: I like Jellyfin but it is nowhere as turnkey as Plex. Otherwise I’d advocate for that too. That being said, I am slowly trying to get mine nice and stable and user-friendly because the way Plex is going does not give me great confidence about the next 2 to 3 years. But at least right now, it is by far the best experience out there.
cf100clunk 9mo ago
Dupe of https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46824003 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46824003
junon 9mo ago
My shield bricked itself after just a few months, so YMMV on this. No rhyme or reason why.
- dilfred 9mo ago
  Mine did as well after an update but thankfully i was within the return/replace window at bestbuy. Ive just never updated it (5 years) and it’s been awesome to use with jellyfin and streaming games from the pc.
pier25 9mo ago
What a new model would need is more compat with DV and better software. Get rid of the Android ads. Add better frame rate matching. Etc.
cf100clunk 9mo ago
The Shield TV's cylindrical form factor could use a rethink. It is hard to find a good spot for it on a shelf when cords are connected at both ends (HDMI and MMC slot at one end, power and LAN at the other) and the ports are too close for all cords to use right-angle-heads. Leaving it invisible by placing it on the floor or behind other gear sometimes impedes Bluetooth signal, so there it sits, well apart from the AVR, BD, other devices.
- ianburrell 9mo ago
  That is the new Shield TV design from 2019. The original Shield TV and the Pro were flat design. Strange that they changed it when old design worked well.
  - davidmurdoch 9mo ago
    I have a 2019 and it's flat.
    - mintplant 9mo ago
      I think that's because you have the Pro version.
- qmr 9mo ago
  The Flying Spaghetti Monster blessed you with CAD and a 3D printer for such tasks.
  - Cpoll 9mo ago
    The solution to it being clunky can't be to add mass to it. Unless you're proposing transferring the internals to a new case and facing all the ports to the back. Seriously, look at this thing. The best thing you can do is tie-wrap the cables together.
    - cf100clunk 8mo ago
      Nothing on ifixit so far regarding the 2019 Shield TV 2nd Gen cylindrical device: https://www.ifixit.com/Search?query=nvidia+shield https://www.ifixit.com/Search?query=nvidia+shield I've been hacking on computer and av hardware for ~40 years, but I know NOT to risk the only one I've got without getting some clear sense of the pitfalls ahead by using schematics, teardowns, photos, etc.
g051051 9mo ago
My Nvidia Shield Portable is sad to hear this. They updated it to Lollipop 5.1 and then killed it. Pretty much useless now.
- joshstrange 9mo ago
  That was such a cool device. Running emulators on it was a blast. When I got my Steam Deck it immediately reminded me of the Nvidia Shield Portable.
TuringNYC 9mo ago
I love the NVIDIA Shield as a technical product...but...I really wish they spent some effort on User Experience.
- j45 9mo ago
  It should be possible to install a alternative launcher that is preferable. The reality though, is that there's likely bigger fish being chased.
- JoeBOFH 9mo ago
  If memory serves the launcher/ui is out of their control. It is GoogleTVs launcher and they are forced to use it.
- aaravchen 9mo ago
  Search a bit and you'll find how to install Projectivity/Projectivy Launcher that's way way better. For bonus points and a lot snapper functionality you can go the extra mile and use adb to remove the old Google Launcher and the related bloatware.
DecoPerson 9mo ago
The Steam Link, also from 2015, is also still receiving updates! My partner and I use ours regularly to play co-op games on our TV. I really appreciate the efforts of whomever is keeping it running.
- Blackthorn 9mo ago
  Steam Link is one of the greatest hardware releases of all time.
raggi 9mo ago
I love my shield, it’s been a staple. If they wanted to really knock it out the park, the next step would be a steamos port with DRM support.
- Mindwipe 9mo ago
  Unless Valve are going to do some work to enable that and support a hardware backed chain of trust for drivers that's not going to happen. (I think it should happen but that's not the same as that it will.)
  - mavamaarten 9mo ago
    That would be great, honestly. Imagine just being able to install Android apps like Netflix, Disney+, ... On your Steam Deck or Steam Machine and having it work out of the box with Widevine L1. Then you'd truly just only need one device attached to your TV for all your entertainment needs. And then a great and supported one at that.
  - raggi 8mo ago
    The drivers are already done, they're in the Android build. I just want a more open OS. I don't mind if it requires running a vendor signed boot, kernel and driver chain, I'd be using those same vendor chains anyway for non upstreamed hardware most likely.
- drnick1 9mo ago
  DRM is anti-consumer malware, so I hope not. There are other ways to source videos than paying a monthly fee forever for something that you will never own.
  - fragmede 9mo ago
    Yeah, but when your daughter wants to watch Moana 2, that tends to stop being an issue.
    - redeeman 9mo ago
DustinBrett 9mo ago
It's sad how few competitors have come out in a decade.
wronglebowski 9mo ago
Everyone is missing the why here, this only happens because the whole stack is vertically integrated. Even if say LG wanted to make a box like this and update it for 10 years they couldn’t, they don’t make the chips. Qualcomm straight up refuses to support chips through this many Android releases. Even if device manufacturers want to support devices forever it won’t matter if the actual SoC platform drops support.
- IshKebab 9mo ago
  If you read the article the actual "why" is because the CEO personally requested it and gave an effectively unlimited budget.
  - miggol 9mo ago
    No need to be rude. The person above is adding a new insight to the conversation. Vertical integration makes it possible but motivation makes it happen. Where is Samsung's ultra LTS Exynos device?
- jeroenhd 9mo ago
  While the vertical integration is definitely the best way to get it done, it's not strictly required as long as there is good enough documentation for a platform. Linux originally supported Intel without any Intel engineers even knowing it existed. Also consider Apple's chips, which have gotten Linux support without Apple ever submitting a single line of code. While Qualcomm's behaviour is definitely a massive bummer (not to mention Qualcomm's competitors), it doesn't stop manufacturers from supporting their devices. It merely stops maintaining support from being cheap and easy.
  - AnthonyMouse 9mo ago
    Not only that, "vertical integration" is a red herring. If you had a "vertically integrated" device made entirely by Qualcomm and they stopped supporting it after 3 years then the vertical integration buys you nothing. The actual problem is that Qualcomm sucks.
  - 9mo ago

242 points by qmr 9mo ago

That reminds me of my own Samsung Galaxy SII. Shipped out of the box with Android 2.3, Samsung supported it up until Android 4.1, then I switched to CyanogenMod until my father rage-bought me a new phone in 2016 because it crashed so much he had trouble contacting me. I still kept it up to date with LineageOS and then unofficial versions for fun (it's at Android 13 last I checked). Do I expect a Samsung Galaxy SII to do as well with 2026 software as it did in 2013? No, but I can run a 2013 computer with 2026 software without needing to track down dodgy homebrews on xdaforums.com and that reflects badly on the smartphone ecosystem.

joe_mamba 9mo ago
>That reminds me of my own Samsung Galaxy SII. Shipped out of the box with Android 2.3, Samsung supported it up until Android 4.1 Even that was amazing for Samsung's standards back then. For example my former Samsung Note II shipped with Android 4.1.1 Jellybean and they only supported it till 4.4.2 KitKat. Just let that sink in. I basically bought a flagship e-waste device. Custom ROMs didn't help much since you'd lose S-pen functionality if you went past 4.4.2 as modders couldn't port the needed firmware blobs past that kernel or something like that. Oh, and also, using custom ROMs could brick your wifi from working as the FW of the wifi chip was tied to Knox tripping the e-fuse on custom ROMs, so then you'd need to use some voodoo to patch wifi back. That is, if you were lucky and your phone wouldn't brick itself due to the FW bug in Samsung's eMMC, that would lock itself to read-only mode out of nowhere. Seriously, fuck Samsung for that PoS phone, fuck them in the a**. That phone should have been a lemon recall with full refund to consumers.
- AstroNutt 9mo ago
  I rooted my old S3 probably around 2016 I had laying around. There was an exploit called "let it rain" and that got me root access. Then on XDA Developers I found several custom ROM'S. Someone even created a Nougat ROM for that thing later on. That was the last version I was able to load on it. I sure did learn a lot back then.

drnick1 9mo ago

It's nice that you can unlock the bootloader on these and flash Lineage if you want to limit snooping by Google. That being said, I think that you get more flexibility and performance with a mini PC and and air mouse. For one, stock (Googled) Android does not give you an easy way to use a browser with an ad-blocker, which is still the best way to stream from many sources without ads. Also all these anemic Android boxes struggle with high bitrate 4K videos.

aaravchen 9mo ago
You unfortunately lose Widevine support when you do this though (either switching to LineageOS or a mini-PC). That means you can't stream any of the mainstream services in anything like a half-decent quality. It's very unfortunate that every streaming service has given up on supporting anything except Google-fied Android and Apple iOS/tvOS. I dont like the services to begin with, but a fully Jellyfin stack can only get you so far when there are niche requests involved as well.
- drnick1 9mo ago
  > That means you can't stream any of the mainstream services in anything like a half-decent quality. Maybe, but I don't think it's a big loss, and the *arr suite works just fine as a substitute.
  - aaravchen 9mo ago
    That's the kicker I'm pointing out. It's a very limited number of people that agree. If you're satisfied with the equivalent of 6-12 DVDs worth of content, or are only pulling the latest of a handful of shows and deleting them once watched, that's about all most people's setups will be able to store. But just like when streaming first started, people appreciate the 100s of TB of content from the streaming services and usually want that level of access. I have 40+ TB on a >100TB system and we still use Netflix, HBO, or AppleTV+.
- spockz 9mo ago
  At this point I actually don’t know why I bother with the streaming services anymore. I recently watched a blu ray movie after a long time of just watching streams and the quality of the picture just blew me away. Is there even Blu-ray level content available for series that are streaming only? Or is it restricted to just movie releases? Edit: actually, now that I think of it, having the audio available in our local language instead of English is a boon for the kids. But otherwise, I don’t know why we bother.

stuaxo 9mo ago

I'd buy one if they made a new one, but I guess thats basically the hardware the switch uses

emsixteen 9mo ago
This has me wondering if I can use my release Switch as an Android TV box

badsectoracula 9mo ago

Unfortunately it doesn't seem to extend to the other Shield products. My Nvidia Shield tablet hasn't had an update in many years. Then again, this is probably why it is still fast :-P I'm using it pretty much daily as an ebook reader and sometimes i use it to watch videos on bed by transcoding them on my PC (the hardware isn't that good to decode modern formats). Amusingly, these days i use it much more than back when it was new :-P. I keep it offline though (mainly to avoid wasting battery, there isn't anything in it i'd care if it caught malware by net osmosis somehow) and transfer files via a USB cable.

sgloutnikov 9mo ago

No thanks. Downgraded to 8.2.3 years ago and going strong with a custom launcher. Has absolutely everything I need and nothing that I don’t. This was the guide back then, possibly still works. [0] [0] https://florisse.nl/shield-downgrade/ https://florisse.nl/shield-downgrade/

flixing 9mo ago
this. anything above 9.x has been shit for me.
Novosell 9mo ago
I just removed updates from whichever app it is that handles the launcher, all ads gone, still get to be on latest OS version :)
- wredcoll 9mo ago
  How?
  - Novosell 8mo ago
    On android you can, usually, go into the settings, go to the app section, go into the specific app you wanna downgrade and, if it's an app that comes preinstalled and can't be deleted outright, you get an option to "remove upgrades" or some such thing.

magicalhippo 9mo ago

I have one of them, and been using it daily since I bought it in 2016. Bought a cheap Bluetooth remote control from AliExpress which was an upgrade over the Logitech Harmony crap I had earlier. If it were to break, knock on wood it won't happen, what options are there? I have tried to look but haven't really found anything that is free of Chinese backdoors and has decent hardware. For just Plex or Jellyfin a N100 box or similar could do, but I want easy launch of HBO, YouTube etc. And I need that remote control option.

VerifiedReports 9mo ago
From what I've seen in forums where people asked this, the answer is: nothing. I only have two devices providing material to my media system: a Shield Pro and a Blu-Ray player. The Shield is the critical element, used daily for streaming and playing local media from a USB-connected SSD. I hope Nvidia revises the Shield with up-to-date hardware and maintains its flexible nature. It's a pretty cool product. The biggest shortcomings I've encountered are the fault of moronic media companies. Great example: Spectrum (the cable company). These dolts have an Android application with which subscribers can watch content. But it doesn't run on Android TVs. It's called "Spectrum TV." It's so gallingly stupid that I hate rewarding them with money every month. Oh, and I love how they addressed the goddamned Netflix button. If you so much as LOOK at the remote, Netflix launches in the middle of whatever you're watching. I actually removed the button from the remote entirely.
- deleted 9mo ago
  [deleted]
- scrollop 9mo ago
  Netflix button fix- Get the app "button mapper" (or similar name) On the free version, you can configure the button for- one click of the netflix button to open Plex, and 2 clicks to open something else (eg youtube). This also works when the shield and TV are off- One click of the netflix button turns on the shield, which turns on the tv.
  - 9mo ago

nevi-me 9mo ago

My 2017 model probably short circuited during a lightning strike, because it stopped working after a storm. My friend offered to sell me his 2019 but I thought there'd be new hardware. I should have bought it. I love the Shield, compared to even the Chromecast at the time, we noticed a huge difference in colour on the TV. If NVIDIA ever produce a refresh, they'll have my money.

hgomersall 9mo ago
But you can buy it now. I'm not sure what's different if you thought you should have bought your friends.

Midar 9mo ago

And yet, they dropped updates for my Shield Tablet basically immediately after I bought it…

zimmerfrei 9mo ago

> Nvidia released the first Shield Android TV in 2015 > it took about 18 months to [create] an entirely new security stack [...] Android updates aren’t actually that much work compared to DRM security, and some of its partners weren’t that keen on re-certifying older products. > In February 2025, Nvidia released Shield Patch 9.2 [...] That was the Tegra X1 [security] bug finally being laid to rest on the 2015 and 2017 Shield boxes. This is a real engineering marvel. Everybody else would have just given up entirely long time ago. DRM bugs are in most case practically unrecoverable for products that shipped already (and physically in the hands of the adversary). The incentive to tell to consumers "Ditch that product you bought from us 2 years ago, and buy the more recent hardware revision or successor" is extremely strong. This really feels like a platform that is maintained with pride and love by the nvidia engineering teams (regardless of one's opinion about DRM per se).

altano 9mo ago
They added auto-playing, full screen video ads to the home screen. I threw mine in the garbage. Pride and love, lol…
- zinekeller 9mo ago
  > They added auto-playing, full screen video ads to the home screen. I'm pretty sure this is actually Google's fault (even Sony televisions suffer from this bullcrap). Unlike phone Android, Google TV (yes, that's the official name now) enforces certain "standards", one of them is this bullcrap.
  - School-Cotton 9mo ago
    My Sony TV doesn't do this, thankfully
    - sheepscreek 8mo ago
      My Samsung Frame TV shows ads in the app bar and you cannot disable/remove them. They can’t even use the Google excuse because the TV runs Samsung’s OWN TizenOS. They’re lucky it’s a good (beautiful) TV..

xchip 9mo ago

They updated it recently to fix the stuttering in the Disney app, and that issue had been there for a year or so. And they did that probably because Disney paid them. It's a corporation, they don't work for free.

ekianjo 9mo ago

Is this a paid PR piece? Because many other devices by Nvidia like the Jetson boards never get any long term updates.

sp3n 9mo ago

something else that is outstanding about this device is the support. a couple of months ago my 2017 edition kept restarting occasionally while watching a movie so i got in touch with nvidia support, after a bit of back n forth they agreed to send me a brand new power adapter for free which arrived promptly and completely fixed the problem

bergheim 9mo ago

I'm not even sure which one I have, it's old but it's great. Use it for streaming (smarttube, some apps) and moonlight/sunshine. It does 4k with a ps5 controller so well. Love it. I think it was like a 100 bucks 8 years ago? I use my desktop 5090 and basically stopped using ps5 for couch gaming because it looks so much better. Great value! Also, not that this is better probably (it is Google and Nvidia after all), but it means my Samsung TV is not connected to the internet, so I don't have to wait 10 seconds for the menu to come up because it is busy loading and injecting ads.

swiftcoder 9mo ago

This a company which routinely provides driver updates to their GPUs for 10+ years. I'm guessing that puts them in a different mindset from the get-go, to your typically smartphone vendor.

duxup 9mo ago

If I KNEW companies would do things like this, I'd be more likely to buy their product. But on the other hand I don't know who to trust because plenty say such things because it is easy to say then ... and then they just quit. It's part of the reason I like Apple devices.

JoshGlazebrook 9mo ago

The CEO actively uses the shield pro which im sure is part of it. I just wish they would release a refresh.

tempest_ 9mo ago

Now if only they would release an updated one.

mrandish 9mo ago
I'd love to buy a newer, better streaming box than the several I already have but after spending quite a bit of time investigating, the state of Android TV-based streaming boxes & sticks is awful. That's one reason NVidia's Shield (Tegra X1 SoC) is still well-regarded despite being a circa 2015 design (the 2019 rev was just a cost reduce/bug fix with the same performance). Beyond that your choices are to either stick with the same mainstream Google/Amazon/WalMart boxes which are locked down and based on 5+ year-old SoC designs or go with second-tier boxes from Asian vendors on AliExpress/Amazon/eBay, all of which have some different combination of significant compromises: * Don't work with certain DRM, streaming services or codecs * Has unreliable manufacturer support (certain firmware works with some DRM/services, next rev fixes one but breaks another) And even those are built on old hardware designs because there's been no significant advancement in set-top SoC performance for over 5 years. There are only a handful of set-top SoC makers (MediaTek, Amlogic, Rockchip, etc) and while they do occasionally introduce new chips, they mostly only update the video decoding block to support newer codec levels or DRM revisions while keeping the same ancient ARM CPU/GPU cores (or different cores with the same class of 2015-2018 performance). A good example is the Ugoos AM6B Plus box someone in this thread mentioned as an option for certain use cases. It's been verified to decode DV7 with FEL BUT only works well with local files, not streaming services. And the Amlogic 922x SoC in that box is 5+ year-old tech (I have the same chip in an Amazon Fire TV Stick 4k Max (2nd gen)). The hardware performance of these boxes has been essentially frozen in time due to a 'perfect storm' of factors: * Most consumers want the cheapest box they can get which plays the main streaming platforms (NetFlix, Amazon, Apple, Disney+, etc). As long as they get a picture of minimally acceptable quality, they don't know or care if the hardware/firmware/drivers properly support the better Dolbyvision levels or adds the enhancement layer or supports ICtCp color space, 12-bit tunneling through RGB or if it handles Source-Based Tone Mapping (SBTM) correctly. They also don't care about playing locally hosted files smoothly or horrendous latency in the Wifi/Ethernet driver stack that nerfs local game streaming. * DRM is a shit show. The big Hollywood studios require streaming platforms to use specific encryption. So the streaming platform apps will only playback streams on SoCs which have been officially certified (or they nerf the stream to 720p). The certification process is onerous, costly and time-consuming for SoC makers. * SoC makers, having run the certification gauntlet a couple times now, would like to do it again, approximately... never. On top of that mess, developing and maintaining firmware for their decoding block which properly supports the constantly evolving landscape of divergent codec levels, enhancement layers, color spaces, tone mapping, etc is hard, expensive and requires deep expertise across multiple domains. They just want to sell trays of cheap SoCs and see all the rest as a bottomless money pit eating their slim margins. NVidia did all this with the Shield and it's grandfathered in on the DRM and they've done a decent job supporting some more recent codecs, levels and layers where they can. But the Tegra X1 platform is 10+ years old now - yet it's still slightly more performant than any other DRM-certified SoC to this day, which just shows what a mess this is. Which is insanely frustrating if you understand technology platforms, care about actually seeing the full quality modern tech can deliver and would like to do so on a non-ancient hardware platform capable of other trivial things like locally streaming files with actual throughput >100mbps or streaming games with non-glacial latency. But that's just table stakes because the things which could be done with more modern hardware are super-interesting, like AI-based upscaling, frame gen, removing compression artifacts, reformatting content, on-device gaming, etc. But using standard small form-factor PC/GPU hardware is a non-starter because of DRM certification. So... it would be great if NVidia would make a new Shield based on the new Tegra. But that's a huge new effort and, sadly, NVidia would crazy to divert resources or wafers from the AI-bubble cash printer to anything else - so I highly doubt it's going to happen.

titaniumrain 9mo ago

honestly, shield tv changed how i interact with my tv and my opinion about Android TV (even though its market sucks)

j45 9mo ago
It is how Android should be across all devices.

2OEH8eoCRo0 9mo ago

It's ironic that Nvidia before becoming a behemoth had the money for this kind of device.

j45 9mo ago
They have been a public company for over 20 years.
- 2OEH8eoCRo0 9mo ago
  Look at their valuation for those 20 years compared to today. What was their valuation 10 years ago?
  - j45 9mo ago
    Oh, I'm familiar with the valuation. They were able to build this device and provide a Android TV certified 4K device that didn't need to have planned obsoleteness.
    - Mindwipe 9mo ago
      I mean the main reason it exists is because. Nvidia spent a bunch of money designing and fabbing the Tegra for automotive use and nobody bought it so the project was desperate to find a customer rather than out of the goodness of their hearts. That's also why they sold it to Nintendo at a bargain basement price for the Switch. I strongly suspect the reality is that they had to give Nintendo so much money back due to the complete failure of the bootloader security that they still produce the Shield as Jensen still demands they claw their way back to break even.
    - 2OEH8eoCRo0 9mo ago
      Yes. And it's ironic that they can do this ten years ago but can't be bothered to make a new one today. I guess the old one still works well enough and people buy it though which the article states. Feels like a reverse Bell Labs approach. They find their cash cow and only invest in their cash cow rather than research new product areas and fields.

beastman82 9mo ago

I have had two for 10 years and have no complaints whatsoever

akersten 9mo ago
The lack of hardware support for a few modern codecs is a pretty big complaint from me, but nothing else out there is decent :/
- safeimp 9mo ago
  It depends what you're looking for. In the AV enthusiast circles a lot of people flock towards the Ugoos AM6B Plus (with CoreELEC). It is one of the only devices (alongside Oppo clones) that can play Dolby Vision Profile 7 FEL (Full Enhancement Layer) with 100% accuracy. The Shield can play P7, but it ignores the FEL data; the Ugoos actually processes it. That said, people don’t generally use Android on it, instead you boot to CoreELEC from an SD card and use Kodi.
  - aaravchen 9mo ago
    The unfortunate part is that CoreELEC only works when you get all your content from a locally attached disk. You can't even really stream it from your beefy NAS/server, and you definitely can't use any streaming services. I'm constantly surprised how many people are in that narrow category of just dipping thier toe in the water for "self-hosted" content that it's little enough it fits on disk storage you can have in your living room (mine is a half-height server rack in the basement), but also have progressed past thr point of using any streaming services. I guess there are a lot of people without families that also never travel out there.
    - compsciphd 9mo ago
      I used it with plex (in kodi) just fine. With that said, I'd agree that its mostly for local media (where local can be whatever plex can get to). Outside of plex, either you are using plain kodi or some simple kodi extensions (say youtube) that just aren't as nice to use as their android app equivalents (in regards to streaming services, it does support MLB.TV for those that like baseball, but again, not quite as nice an experience IMO as the android app).

buu709 9mo ago

I've got the OG model, and it's still the main device hooked up to my TV. All my TV streaming goes through it (mostly Jellyfin these days), and it can stream games no problem via Moonlight. It's hooked up to a 4k LG TV, and I have no idea about how it does the upscaling, but 720p content looks perfectly fine on it. Best (worst?) of all... it still gets updates.

pdntspa 9mo ago
Yeah I just loved the one where they forced ads on the homescreen. Now I use ProjectIvy
- BLKNSLVR 9mo ago
  +1 for Projectivy. After the ADHD-inducing default Android TV interface, Projectivy is just beautifully clean and simple. I have quite a few Android TV (or are they called Google TV these days?) devices, and they all get the Projectivy makeover. The TCL TV running Android needs some 'adb' commands run so that the users selection of launcher is maintained across reboots, bit other than that it's been smooth.
Loughla 9mo ago
The only two complaints about mine is the one set of updates about 5 years ago that killed every connection to my NAS, and that the auto skip function for credits doesn't know if there are scenes after the credits. But overall, for running it for like 9 years with a cost of less than $200 and essentially zero maintenance, the shield is awesome.
j45 9mo ago
I thought the Shield's claim to fame was it was a certified 4K Android TV device because it could handle it early on?

zdw 9mo ago

Shield TV + extra storage + HDHomeRun tuner is still a great device for getting OTA TV. The only downside is that more recent versions use the Google Android TV launcher which is filled with a garbage truck full of ads, often for things I would never want to watch (horror movies? Nope!). Yes you can replace the launcher, but that's a pain. Would love to pay more for a device that has updated codec support, no ads or tracking, and is basically identical.

add-sub-mul-div 9mo ago
I wanted to do this and got a Shield last year but returned it because of a live TV bug with the Android Plex client. The programming guide stopped working and could only be fixed by restarting the app, but on Android quitting to the home screen keeps the app running and you can't force quit without going into menus. Sadly that's the OS and changing a launcher didn't fix it.
- aaravchen 9mo ago
  Actually you can double tap the home button on your remote to see all apps currently running, and can then click the close button on any one of them. Google TV apps leak memory like a sieve, so it's pretty common to need to manually close all other apps to make the one you're trying to use work. Even !y wife just dies of now as soon as any one of the apps starts acting up.
- Grazester 9mo ago
  Yeah that's not how you close an app on the Shield as was pointed out.
Forgeties79 9mo ago
If plex was smart they’d sell a little box of their own and ditch all this faux-social media nonsense they’re slowly implementing. I do not care at all what my friends are watching. Not one bit. Just make it connect to servers. People are happy to pay for it clearly. How many beelinks have been sold just to run Jellyfin/Plex? I’d gladly buy a plex box for $100 - talk about a great Christmas present for friends and family! Sidebar: I like Jellyfin but it is nowhere as turnkey as Plex. Otherwise I’d advocate for that too. That being said, I am slowly trying to get mine nice and stable and user-friendly because the way Plex is going does not give me great confidence about the next 2 to 3 years. But at least right now, it is by far the best experience out there.

cf100clunk 9mo ago

Dupe of https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46824003 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46824003

junon 9mo ago

My shield bricked itself after just a few months, so YMMV on this. No rhyme or reason why.

dilfred 9mo ago
Mine did as well after an update but thankfully i was within the return/replace window at bestbuy. Ive just never updated it (5 years) and it’s been awesome to use with jellyfin and streaming games from the pc.

pier25 9mo ago

What a new model would need is more compat with DV and better software. Get rid of the Android ads. Add better frame rate matching. Etc.

cf100clunk 9mo ago

The Shield TV's cylindrical form factor could use a rethink. It is hard to find a good spot for it on a shelf when cords are connected at both ends (HDMI and MMC slot at one end, power and LAN at the other) and the ports are too close for all cords to use right-angle-heads. Leaving it invisible by placing it on the floor or behind other gear sometimes impedes Bluetooth signal, so there it sits, well apart from the AVR, BD, other devices.

ianburrell 9mo ago
That is the new Shield TV design from 2019. The original Shield TV and the Pro were flat design. Strange that they changed it when old design worked well.
- davidmurdoch 9mo ago
  I have a 2019 and it's flat.
  - mintplant 9mo ago
    I think that's because you have the Pro version.
qmr 9mo ago
The Flying Spaghetti Monster blessed you with CAD and a 3D printer for such tasks.
- Cpoll 9mo ago
  The solution to it being clunky can't be to add mass to it. Unless you're proposing transferring the internals to a new case and facing all the ports to the back. Seriously, look at this thing. The best thing you can do is tie-wrap the cables together.
  - cf100clunk 8mo ago
    Nothing on ifixit so far regarding the 2019 Shield TV 2nd Gen cylindrical device: https://www.ifixit.com/Search?query=nvidia+shield https://www.ifixit.com/Search?query=nvidia+shield I've been hacking on computer and av hardware for ~40 years, but I know NOT to risk the only one I've got without getting some clear sense of the pitfalls ahead by using schematics, teardowns, photos, etc.

g051051 9mo ago

My Nvidia Shield Portable is sad to hear this. They updated it to Lollipop 5.1 and then killed it. Pretty much useless now.

joshstrange 9mo ago
That was such a cool device. Running emulators on it was a blast. When I got my Steam Deck it immediately reminded me of the Nvidia Shield Portable.

TuringNYC 9mo ago

I love the NVIDIA Shield as a technical product...but...I really wish they spent some effort on User Experience.

j45 9mo ago
It should be possible to install a alternative launcher that is preferable. The reality though, is that there's likely bigger fish being chased.
JoeBOFH 9mo ago
If memory serves the launcher/ui is out of their control. It is GoogleTVs launcher and they are forced to use it.
aaravchen 9mo ago
Search a bit and you'll find how to install Projectivity/Projectivy Launcher that's way way better. For bonus points and a lot snapper functionality you can go the extra mile and use adb to remove the old Google Launcher and the related bloatware.

DecoPerson 9mo ago

The Steam Link, also from 2015, is also still receiving updates! My partner and I use ours regularly to play co-op games on our TV. I really appreciate the efforts of whomever is keeping it running.

Blackthorn 9mo ago
Steam Link is one of the greatest hardware releases of all time.

raggi 9mo ago

I love my shield, it’s been a staple. If they wanted to really knock it out the park, the next step would be a steamos port with DRM support.

Mindwipe 9mo ago
Unless Valve are going to do some work to enable that and support a hardware backed chain of trust for drivers that's not going to happen. (I think it should happen but that's not the same as that it will.)
- mavamaarten 9mo ago
  That would be great, honestly. Imagine just being able to install Android apps like Netflix, Disney+, ... On your Steam Deck or Steam Machine and having it work out of the box with Widevine L1. Then you'd truly just only need one device attached to your TV for all your entertainment needs. And then a great and supported one at that.
- raggi 8mo ago
  The drivers are already done, they're in the Android build. I just want a more open OS. I don't mind if it requires running a vendor signed boot, kernel and driver chain, I'd be using those same vendor chains anyway for non upstreamed hardware most likely.
drnick1 9mo ago
DRM is anti-consumer malware, so I hope not. There are other ways to source videos than paying a monthly fee forever for something that you will never own.
- fragmede 9mo ago
  Yeah, but when your daughter wants to watch Moana 2, that tends to stop being an issue.
  - redeeman 9mo ago

DustinBrett 9mo ago

It's sad how few competitors have come out in a decade.

wronglebowski 9mo ago

Everyone is missing the why here, this only happens because the whole stack is vertically integrated. Even if say LG wanted to make a box like this and update it for 10 years they couldn’t, they don’t make the chips. Qualcomm straight up refuses to support chips through this many Android releases. Even if device manufacturers want to support devices forever it won’t matter if the actual SoC platform drops support.

IshKebab 9mo ago
If you read the article the actual "why" is because the CEO personally requested it and gave an effectively unlimited budget.
- miggol 9mo ago
  No need to be rude. The person above is adding a new insight to the conversation. Vertical integration makes it possible but motivation makes it happen. Where is Samsung's ultra LTS Exynos device?
jeroenhd 9mo ago
While the vertical integration is definitely the best way to get it done, it's not strictly required as long as there is good enough documentation for a platform. Linux originally supported Intel without any Intel engineers even knowing it existed. Also consider Apple's chips, which have gotten Linux support without Apple ever submitting a single line of code. While Qualcomm's behaviour is definitely a massive bummer (not to mention Qualcomm's competitors), it doesn't stop manufacturers from supporting their devices. It merely stops maintaining support from being cheap and easy.
- AnthonyMouse 9mo ago
  Not only that, "vertical integration" is a red herring. If you had a "vertically integrated" device made entirely by Qualcomm and they stopped supporting it after 3 years then the vertical integration buys you nothing. The actual problem is that Qualcomm sucks.
- 9mo ago