NVIDIA Shield TV

A few issues that I’ve noticed with Tablo on the Shield TV:

  • The control bar often doesn’t disappear/hide when playing content
  • Navigation controls are unintuitive…I keep pressing the “B” button to go back, but it instead selects/plays a show.
  • I seem to have a hard time getting back to the menu bar (left side menu); pressing left on the controller doesn’t always work. Seems like it only works on certain screens.

Thanks for the feedback. Are you using just the gamepad to control it, or the remote (seems costly as an add-on)?

The gamepad; still debating whether to buy the remote.

If you have a Harmony remote, it is supposed to work with the Shield. The only advantage I see to buying the remote is to use the voice search.

You supposedly can hook up a USB or bluetooth keyboard to it as well.

Yes, my harmony [smart control] remote does work. I think it is set up through IR though, not bluetooth…so there is some response lag compared to the Shield WiFi gamepad or Bluetooth remote.

As a side note, its strange how much system sounds can make the TV experience more enjoyable. The Shield provides some system sounds, but only for ‘select’ and errors, it does not provide system sounds for navigation movement or key presses…I keep thinking my TV is muted.

Thanks for the feedback @nosnhojm

I’ll pass this along to the team.

UPDATE: Apparently the issue with the B button has already been resolved and will be included in the next push which is in QA now.

This happens on the nexus player as well. I use the Play/Pause button to stop the stream and then restart… that always takes care of the issue for me.

I also have the problem of the bar not always disappearing when you hit play (I’m using nexus player). And stopping and starting again does fix it. A fairly minor bug but annoying nonetheless

Moving from roku3 to the shield. MUCH better experience overall. Credit to the serious magical programming it took to get the roku interface where it is…but the android TV ui right now is worlds better. Only thing that’s bothering me is the very brief buffering issue during the first 1-2 minutes of live TV. I’ve tried 720 regular and 720 roku with and without fast TV startup and still have those buffering issues. I’m thinking this is the same issue the amazon fire people are talking about. Even with that, the android TV experience is so much better and faster.

My thinking would be that your home network or the Tablo’s hard drive would be the bottleneck if you’re still getting buffering on the Shield. I have the nexus player which has inferior specs to the Shield but it never buffers after the initial start.

I have the shield connected via ethernet hardwire. No buffering was seen with my set-up using the Roku3 so I don’t think the hard drive on the tablo is the culprit.

I have the same buffering with my shield TV and tablo. I’ve learned to just manually pause for about 5 to 10 seconds when starting live tv and then it doesn’t happen.

Any updates on your experience with the Shield TV? Has Tablo addressed any of your issues? I am considering getting this device and cutting Dish Satellite.

How is the Shield TV working for you? I am debating this versus the Fire TV with the Tablo. Do you like the experience?

@Kevin_Lewis I use a Shield TV and it is incredible - by far the best Tablo device I have used. Recordings start within a second or two, and resume from FF usually is instantaneous or <1. The only issues I have, which Tablo is aware of, is inconsistent resume function for recordings and slow refresh on recordings tab after deleting a show you have finished watching. There are also a few other nifty Android TV integrations we are waiting on. Other than that its an awesome experience.

Agree with every word. I have zero issues with Tablo app on the nSTV :wink:

Which version of the Shield did you get? Any difference among different versions beside the storage space?

I have FTV (2nd gen) and have the exact same issue as yours (resume function and the slow refresh on recording tab). The other inconvenience I found was the closed captioning in Tablo app. I have to hold the OK button for a few seconds and then get the option to turn on/off cc for the current show. Does it work the same way on your shield? (I use Harmony remote and unfortunately, holding the OK button does not produce the same effect as the original FTV remote which means I could not control cc thru the Harmony :disappointed: )

But other than those issues, the FTV performance is really good (much faster then Roku 3), and the video quality is excellent.

@kamy2015 I have the 16gb version, only difference is the storage. You can add external storage, so it didn’t seem to be worth the premium for me. I’m thinking the Shield will see a sale on black Friday because NVIDIA and Amazon have recently been handing out $50 off coupons to buy the Shield over the last 2 weeks.

Thanks. I am thinking about this setup to replace a TiVo

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I set the tablo up tonight all is great except for the buttons on my harmony remote. I need to figure out how to get it to work with fast forward on recordings. I essentially want the 30 second skip