> I think the Apple TV is the best streaming box out there

It definitely is.

IMO the only advantage of the Nvidia Shield is better HDMI audio passthrough but it has so many other issues. And with more recent versions of the Plex client for tvOS the lack of audio passthrough is much less of an issue than it used to be (PCM conversion used to introduce sync issues). Also the Plex app for Android TV has been getting consistently worse over the years for me. Plus all the ads Android TV added a couple of years ago. Ugh.

Some of the more exotic boxes out there to run CoreELEC have tehcnically better DV support. These might work if you only want a Plex or Kodi client but for general streaming the Apple TV is just better.

Honestly can't wait for Apple to release a new one. Hopefully with audio passthrough of more codecs.

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beastman82 3 hours ago | parent [-]

what are the shield issues? I've had 2 of them for 10 years and I haven't noticed anything.

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pier25 2 hours ago | parent [-]

For years it had frame rate issues. Every second or so when watching eg Netflix you would see a micro stutter if the content wasn't at 24fps (eg PAL content at 25fps). I think this was improved recently but it's been years since I've used the Shield for anything but Plex.

As for Plex I've had way too many issues to list. Networking issues, having to restart the Plex app after the device went to sleep, etc. When I switched to using Plex on the Apple TV all the issues went away.

It should be noted that I have re-pasted and cleaned the dust of my Shield a couple of times since I got it 10 years ago.

	▲	Rohansi an hour ago \| parent [-]
		> since I got it 10 years ago Probably one of the big issues here. It's probably still the best Android TV you can get today but that's really sad because the SoC in it came out in 2015 (with some improvements in 2019). It was probably worse than what was in Apple TV at the time and Apple refreshed it two times since then.