Tongfamily (Richtong.com Sync)

Well this is supposed to be the most powerful setup box made, but argh, is it hard to setup. 
It requires that you logon to Google and it is really pleasant, asks you to use your phone or your laptop. Here is what I found:

1. The http://g.co/AndroidTV is not compatible with either iPhone or Safari. It displays a partial screen. I get it that Google doesn’t like Apple, but really. So I fired up Firefox and that seemed to work. However, it tries to figure out what network address the nVidia device lives on and at least on my laptop, it decided on some very strange network (192.168.x.x) when we are using a different network. You get an error message saying, please connect to network Xo whatever that means.

2. If you look at the url it is using, you can then see it is trying to find a port on that random network. if you hand change it to the actual ip address of the ShieldTV then it says OK please continue. However, the next screen also has the incorrect embedded URL and so that fails.

3. Now trying to get the Shield TV to enter from the keyboard. I gave up, it is so hard to type on that controller (and my password is kind of long :-). There are no instructions, but you can plug in a USB keyboard and type it in. However if you have a two factor authentication, then you get to a screen that is googles, but there is no way to scroll down other than to use the controller. Man, this feels so unpolished.

4. Now you get to wait for a 850MB software download. Wow a brand new device and you need that much? Then you get another update for the Shield Experience.

5. Finally it has agreement screens for both Google and for nVidia. And no Google, I’m not going to allow my location to be used no matter how many times you ask (they ask twice).

6. You then get to a screen that shows the controller and there doesn’t seem to be anyway to hit the next button. It doesn’t tell you that the A button means next. It should be obvious to gamers, but not super clear and no audio feedback either.

7. With the controller there are no instructions on how to do menu and forward and back, you just get dumped into the main screen. After some button mashing by the way, A means select and B is back. 

8. They have Kodi for reading from your disk (yeah, I can get my Mac Mini back), Netflix, but no Amazon. So there is still no way to get it all until I try the Amazon Fire anyway. I don’t have the latest Apple TV either. 

I tried to google “nVidia Shield TV setup” but didn’t get much, so I guess I’m an early adopter. The net is that it is a hard device to setup,but once you do u get a pretty standard interface.

1. There is kind of a merge of android games with a controller. I’ve never liked fps games in touchscreens. Too hard to control but they appear to allow controllers and maybe even a mouse. 

2. Kodi works exactly like the Mac version so we can use our file server. A big advantage over the AppleTV. 

3. No Anazon video I could find. 🙁 but of course Netflix. 

4. They have streaming real games from Nvidia. I thought they allowed streaming from PCs. 

5. 4K support so I need a 4K monitor. 

6. There is a project to reboot it under Debian and use docker. 🙂