This site may earn affiliate commissions from the links on this page. Terms of utilize.

image-block-nvidia-shield

The Nvidia Shield is an Android Idiot box box, simply it's much more that. While the scattering of other devices running on Android Tv set stick closely to the standard Google-prescribed feature prepare, Nvidia has added a plethora of gaming and streaming features to the Shield. The Shield has been bundled with the Plex streaming app since launch, merely now the Shield is learning a new trick. The Shield 3.2 update adds the power to run a total Plex media server on the box.

Plex, for those who are non enlightened, is a piece of software that lets y'all stream your video files over your local network or the net from a cardinal media storage box. It tin can handle virtually any video file, presumably ones you've obtained from legal sources, but we're non here to judge. Plex actually transcodes your videos in real time, and then streams them to your chosen screen. Thus, it supports just virtually any type of video on any screen.

Plex relies upon two components to get this done: a media server and a streaming client that really displays the video. Prior to the new Shield update, the hardware could but play video from your media server like whatsoever other Android device. Now, it can really be the media server. The base of operations model Shield costs $200, but it but has 16GB of included storage. The $300 Shield bumps that to 500GB. Even so, both models back up expandable storage via microSD cards and USB ports for external hard drives. The Android 6.0 build running on Shield as well supports adoptable storage, so you tin treat external storage as internal to make managing files easier.

This is a absurd feature because in the past heavy Plex users would accept to build reasonably powerful media servers to make their libraries streamable — transcoding does take some horsepower. Some people simply utilise their main calculator as a Plex server, just it has to remain online all the time to work. Plex says the Shield implementation is possible thank you to the powerful hardware Nvidia used. The Shield is based on the Tegra X1 SoC, a quad-cadre 64-flake ARM scrap with a 256-core Maxwell GPU. It has support for hardware-accelerated video transcoding in H.264, MPEG2, and HEVC. That's just what you need for Plex.

The $300  Shield is now the cheapest way to get a usable Plex box up and running. Even if you lot don't purchase expandable storage, 500GB is a good corporeality of infinite to get started. The Plex update also includes the power to manage your Shield's storage over a local network using your figurer. That'll exist keen for loading video onto the server. Nvidia hasn't specified the release engagement for the 3.2 update, simply it shouldn't be more than than a week or two. Basic Plex streaming over your network is supported complimentary, but some features like remote streaming and offline caching require a $40 yearly Plex Pass subscription.