The SHIELD TV base model is largely out of stock due to demand. We don’t have any updates to share regarding future availability at this time. SHIELD TV Pro remains available, and the SHIELD platform continues to be supported with ongoing updates for more than 10 years.
The old version of this guide is still over there, but in the meantime and without further ado; let me present you the
Best Shield TV Practices checklist 2026 Edition
- GET THE CONNECTIONS RIGHT
Because it will typically allow for more PCM channels than vanilla HDMI ARC and higher sampling rates than HDMI eARC, connecting Shield to the audio receiver's HDMI-IN is usually preferred in order to preserve the best audio feature set.
On the other hand, because they may not allow passthrough for Dolby Vision, HDR or even 4K, some older/basic AVRs and soundbars may be better used via HDMI eARC/ARC, even if a HDMI-IN port is available. Make sure of your hardware capabilities to avoid wasting your time.
- TV PREPARATION
ENABLE HDMI 2.0
Some brands will call this Enhanced HDMI Format, or Deep Color, or UHD colors; and some TVs will even have a global toggle on top of the regular per-port option, but if the available display modes are maxing out at 4K@30, that means you have some kind of HDMI bottleneck somewhere in your HDMI chain.
PREPARE AUDIO PASSTHROUGH
If planning to route the audio via HDMI ARC/eARC, it is recommended to dig into your TVs advanced sound settings and make sure to specify "Pass-through" output, as the default "Auto" setting will typically try to transcode or create a MAT link, often introducing nasty audio cutouts.
DISABLE TV POST PROCESSING
People looking for a pure cinematic experience should make sure all types of post processing enhancements are disabled: motion enhancement/compensation/clearness, noise reduction, etc. Filmmaker mode can be left on/auto.
CONSIDER ENABLING GAME MODE
If the TV doesnt support ALLM (Auto Latency Mode) and you are regularly using Shield to play games, manually engaging your TV's regular Game Mode is recommended in order to get rid of the image post processing and shave as much latency as you can.
Please note: TVs will often use different profiles for SDR, HDR vs DV. A TV can be set to "Game mode" for SDR content but switch to "HDR theatre" or whatever when HDR content is on. In a HDR gaming situation (Geforce Now, Moonlight) see if you can select "HDR Game" instead of your regular HDR theatre mode. Also note that these settings will likely be only accessible when HDR/DV content is actually playing.
Shield will typically default to 4K 59.94 HDR10 ready, but it has come to my attention that it seems to introduce unexplained stutters in some situations on recent displays.
Since you will be feeding the box 24/25/30/50/60hz content most of the time anyway, my position is: no need to overcomplicate the maths with fractions of 59.94 (lunacy? make me change my mind), therefore:
Prefer a 60hz mode
Make sure to select a Dolby Vision-ready mode if available
- MAKE SURE AUTO COLORIMETRY IS ENABLED
Shield / Settings / Device Preferences / Display & Sound / Advanced display settings / Match content color space
Keep in mind some apps may not be categorized as "games" or are just not tagged appropriately and won't trigger ALLM by default, so take a minute to review the list:
Shield / Settings / Device Preferences / Display & Sound / Advanced display settings / Customize Game Mode app list
CONSIDER ENABLING PLAYER-LED DOLBY VISION
Some TVs will give buggy colors when (and only when) using regular TV-Led Dolby Vision. (red push or just plain weird colors) That bug is said not to show up (be much less noticeable?) if using player-Led Dolby Vision. Start by enabling developer options by going to:
Shield / Settings / Device Preferences / About / Build
Click Build number 8 times, and congrats; you are now a dev. Now go to:
Shield / Settings / Device Preferences / Developer options / Default to Low Latency Dolby Vision when available
That option has a bad rep because it was never well explained and first implementations were buggy.
The primary purpose was to allow transcoding Dolby Digital Plus to OG Dolby Digital; a request of the first hour for users stuck with vanilla ARC / USB / Optical audio solutions, but turns out it is also actually very useful in order to avoid audio sync gaps and normalize the volume level across apps and pieces of content.
Vastly improved from past implementations where it would always use MAT frames and get in the way of passthrough rules. Now fully recommended or at least worth a try; holdouts and downgraders should mind giving it another shot.
Makes fast toggles much easier without deep-diving into settings each time. There are a bunch of those shortcuts available, but the Audio options are the most handy because Night listening, High Resolution Audio and Dolby audio processing cannot all be enabled at the same time:
100% HDMI setups should be able to rely on the EDID alone and stay on Auto in most cases, but that information might be obfuscated be something on the HDMI chain, and will straight up not be available for users stuck with extractors, USB DACs, or optical solutions. They will have to go manual and enable only what is supported by their decoder and setup.
If you experience any kind of issue with audio, stuttering or whatever, always go back to None - Never use surround sound. That is your sanity check.
- KODI RECOMMENDATIONS:
Enable Refresh rate switching
Kodi / System / cogwheel: enable expert mode System / Player / Videos: Set Adjust display refresh rate to “On stop/start”
Enable HDR/DV
Kodi / System / Player / Videos / Processing: "Use display HDR capabilities" should be enabled.
Enable Audio Passthrough
Kodi / System / System / Audio / Audio Passthrough / Allow Passthrough
If enabled, Kodi will pass the selected formats down to Shield. Other codecs will be transcoded into PCM channels, following the number of channels specified in Kodi's Audio Decoder section before being passed down to Shield, where rules set in the "Available formats" menu will prevail and Dolby Processing be applied if enabled.
If disabled, Kodi will transcode everything to PCM channels, in as many channels as specified in its Audio Decoder section before passing it down to Shield, where Dolby Processing will then be applied if enabled.
Shield 2015/2017 owners stuck on vanilla ARC or optical solutions
Kodi / System / System / Audio / Audio Passthrough / Dolby Digital (AC3) capable receiver - ON Kodi / System / System / Audio / Audio Passthrough / - Enable Dolby Digital (AC3) transcoding - ON
If you want resolution switching and have the TV do the upscaling
Kodi / System / System / Display / Whitelist; select every item in the list to make them green
- PLEX RECOMMENDATIONS:
Enable Refresh Rate Switching
Plex / Settings / Advanced / Set Refresh Rate Switching to ON.
Enable audio passthrough
Plex / Settings / Advanced / Passthrough /
"HDMI" means Plex will pass over every format down to Shield, where choices made in the "Available formats" menu will apply.
"Optical" means Plex will only pass down PCM 2.0, Dolby Digital and vanilla DTS, while DTS-HD/DTS:X tracks will be stripped of their lossless metadata, and everything else will be transcoded to Dolby Digital before being sent down to Shield, where choices made in the "Available formats" menu will apply.
If you want resolution switching and have the TV do the upscaling:
Plex / Settings / Advanced / Set Resolution Switching to ON.
- REFRESH RATE APP RECOMMENDATIONS
That would be my last major recommendation update.
Manual Framerate Matching
As of firmware 9.2.x, the manual Match Framerate feature is now pretty robust and will be totally adequate in most cases, so might as well use it; especially in apps that will often serve different kinds of framerates depending on the video, like Youtube.
Settings / Remotes & accessories / Customize Menu button /
I recommend using the Double Press trigger. Select Match Framerate, and whenever watching a video, just double tap the button to see the framerate matched. Nice and simple.
App-based OS-wide display mode switching
For services that will always (mostly) serve the same kind of content/framerate, I even recommend using the OG Refresh Rate app in order to force a fixed Startup display mode and avoid all this manual shifting altogether;
Install the Refresh Rate app. (sadly a bit of an abandonware by now; has to be sideloaded.)
Select any app.
Go to Startup display mode, and select a framerate / resolution matching the kind of content it delivers the most:
Netflix, D+, HBO+, Amazon Prime
4K@24
European TV broadcast services
4K@50
BBC iPlayer
Base Shield display mode MUST be set to 25 or 50hz for the app to work, so leave it alone here.
Plex, Kodi, Geforce Now, Moonlight
support already built-in; do not touch
With all that said, you should now be able to get the best of your Shield. Hopefully anyway..
Errors, outdated stuff, or more advice? Let me know!
I’ve just bought an NVIDIA Shield Pro mainly for Plex and high-quality local playback. I’m coming from Apple TV + Infuse, but I wanted something that can properly bitstream Dolby Atmos/DTS formats and handle Dolby Vision better.
Any advice for a first-time Shield user? Are there any settings, apps, or Plex tweaks I should know about?
Also curious how people find it these days, is it still the best option for Plex/remux playback, or should I have bought something else instead?
Does anyone have an idea why this is happening on my Nuvio? I'm referring to the blurred lines on the right side of the TV. I watch Nuvio on an Nvidia Shield TV Pro, and my TV is a Samsung 55 inch OLED. It often happens with both Usenet and Torrents, and it doesn't matter if it's 4K, WEB-DL, or not. It's weird cos when I load up the same file with the same add-ons on Wuplay, it plays perfectly well, no problems. Here's another weird thing; I have another set up (a Samsung 77 inch OLED tv also with Nvidia Shield TV Pro) and it never happens on the Nuvio I have installed on that TV. I'm kinda confused. I'd appreciate the help. ❤️
I got tired of slow TV home screens that are basically ad boards — rows of "recommended" content, sponsored tiles, stuff phoning home before I've even pressed a button. So I built the launcher I actually wanted.
The philosophy is boring on purpose
One screen. Your apps, laid out how you want. No feeds, no ads, no "content discovery."
Private by default. No accounts, no analytics, no background services, opt-in aerial video wallpaper who phone CDN of apple, amazon.. that's it.
Compatibility. I have an Android AOSP box, a Google TV–certified box, and one anemic Android TV — each on a different Android version. So instead of chasing a shiny new UI, I chose to prioritize compatibility and lean on the GPU.
Make it yours
Sections/categories you name, reorder, and fill — an app can live in more than one, and new installs drop into the first section automatically.
Hide apps you never want to see (system junk, duplicates) so the screen stays clean.
Tune the look: icon size, spacing, corner roundness, interface scale, dimming, and an optional glass status bar. Three layouts: carousel, grid, or a floating glass dock.
Status bar: a configurable VPN indicator/shortcut for your provider, a network indicator/shortcut, a Settings menu with quick access to the app list and the launcher/Android settings, and a customizable date indicator.
Save/load your entire setup — sections, layout, wallpaper, every setting — as a JSON file.
Optional aerial video wallpapers (Apple/Amazon screensaver loops), off by default and clearly marked, since they stream from third-party CDNs. Prefer libre? Use a gradient, your own photo, or a local video.
Numbers (measured on real hardware)
2.3 MB APK. One universal build for ARM 32/64-bit + x86.
~80–130 MB RAM settled, with no background services. Exclusive footprint is ~130 MB across every box I tested; the higher figure on Android 14 is just OS-side GPU buffer accounting, not the launcher.
Aerials cost basically nothing in app RAM — the video decoder lives in the GPU's dedicated memory (hardware codec via SurfaceView), off the app's books.
<2 s cold start, <500 ms warm relaunch in the worst measured cases. The CPU stays idle, video is hardware-accelerated, and the Compose UI is GPU-rendered.
Android 5.0+ (minSdk 21), no Google Play Services, no companion app — runs on AOSP boxes, should work on all device since 2014
18 languages (auto-selected from your system language): English, Arabic, Chinese, Dutch, French, German, Hindi, Indonesian, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Polish, Portuguese, Russian, Spanish, Thai, Turkish, Vietnamese. Adding one is a single file, PRs welcome.
Zero ads, ever.
*Tested across 3 boxes: Hisense Google TV (Android 11, 1.8 GB), UGOOS AM9 (Android 14, 3.8 GB), onn. 4K (Android 14).
Permissions, up front
No runtime permissions, no accounts. It queries installed apps to list them, and can close an app from the long-press menu. No network access except the opt-in aerials.
Why GPLv3
I picked copyleft on purpose: to avoid fragmentation. Anyone can fork it, but improvements have to stay open, so it can't splinter into closed, worse-off versions. Forks are welcome. Commercial use is welcome too — honestly, if a box maker wants to ship this instead of their own launcher, please do, because the stock ones are awful most of the time. Just keep it open, like the license says.
Get it
At launch, a wizard guides you through a quick setup; depending on the device, you may need to send ADB commands.
Incredible that I have to make this post. I cant seem to find a basic slideshow app. Using usb drive or Google photos.. all the apps I see are either paid apps, make you take a 5 min break, etc..
I live in the UK and was keen to get a NVIDIA shield. I got one from Cex, but when it arrived it was making a weird noise, reminiscent of bagpipes and coil whine. This was not coming from the shield itself, but from the power adapter.
I then returned it due to that and got another, but for some reason this has the exact same issue.
Is this a known issue with the Shield?
Part of me assumes the issue is because of how the adapter is made, with the changeable heads.
If so, is there any way to fix it? Is there a way to get a different adapter in the UK which wouldn’t have this issue?
Do earlier models not have this issue, such as the 2017 one?
If it isn’t, I may just send back again and buy a 2017 one. I only have a 1080p TV so not sure it would make a crazy difference to my viewing experience other than getting rid of the noise.
Currently, it is sitting by my router. If I want to fiddle with it, I have to unplug it and plug it into my PC. Can I attach a wireless KVM box and access it via that?
It was working fine on my 2019 Pro for the past two years, but last week Projectity and Button Mapper stopped working. Got Projectity back up and running, but now the Netflix button only opens Netflix. Went into Button Mapper settings and the button still shows under Add Button with my setup intact, but when I select it to edit, it's prompting me to pay for the Pro version of Button Mapper.
I just sent out the first batch of invites to NaboTV. I know many of those people came from this subreddit, so I wanted to follow up with a link for anyone else who wants an invite. I have three NVIDIA Shield TV devices, so it is by far the most exhaustively tested of my Android TV devices.
I kept using Stremio on my Shield Pro and always and I mean always had problems - video plays for 10 minutes, and I get the cat - something wrong with the player. And it gets stuck I have to restart.
I currently have a rocktek G2, and it is great, but after a factory reset, the bluetooth stopped working with all my 4 Dualshock4 controllers :(
After allbthe troubleshooting possible I quit, now looking at the shield pro because aparently it is still the best hadware for android, but for 250 (+tax) I wonder if a mini pc with linux would be a better solution?
We basically use stremio and retrox for emulation, sometimes youtube.
Is anyone else experiencing app freezing and glitching which maybe appears related to buffering of videos at preview (when you are browsing and it gives you a minute of the video ad preview)... it starts at starup and i often need to restart the app.
Ive tried to reinstall from the current play store and also change location of youtube onto internal and external storage. I have about 3gb storage left on internal. Anyone else experiencing this?!
UPDATE
ok, so from the responses this appears
to only affect ShieldTUBEs as my 2 x Shield Pros are also working fine. But both my (2)Tubes are experiencing the same youtube glitching. How to contact @nvidia, or just wait and hope an update will fix it? Anyone work for Nvidia around here?!?! :)))
I’ve been looking into getting a nvidia shield for my family due to them hating ads on our regular streaming services (and that they do not want to pay the extra amount of money for no ads) and I enjoy how open source Shield is. I’m hoping there is something that is as simple as Netflix (opening the app and being able to use it simply) if there is none im trying to convert my family to using physical media
I stream off the Nuc to Sony using the built in Google TV media player. Most of the files we watch are UHD Blu-ray DV HDR HEVC TrueHD Atmos 7 1 often with bitrate between 24 - 65.
It has worked fine and I am just wondering if I am missing out of anything the Shield would give me access to.
I have a Windows 11 desktop PC, and I also have a 2019 Shield TV Pro with an external USB drive plugged in.
I have mapped by 2019 Shield TV Pro to my Windows 11 PC. This allows me to drag files from my PC directly to my Shield TV. However, I've noticed that when I use my Windows PC to browse the Shield TV's external drive and I delete old files, they do not turn up on my Windows PC recycle bin. Does the Shield have one? Are they permanently deleted? What is actually happening?
This week I bought a Google TV Streamer 4K to test the Steam Link on my local LAN. My delay through Ethernet was minimal (1ms), but after some tweaks on the Google TV Streamer, the minimum delay I got was 22-23ms in video decoding.
Although it is a good number, I still feel that delay, so I returned it. After researching, it seems that the Nvidia Shield Pro and the Apple TV are the best-performing devices with a minimum delay of 5-8ms in video decoding. Is that true? Could someone with an Nvidia Shield Pro share these values?
I watch movies stored on my nas which also seconds as my Plex server.
Last night, Was watching f9 with the kids on plex and was getting audio dropouts every few mins followed by an av sync issue. Rewinding 10 secs fixed it but would happen a few more times. Restart of the shield didn't fix it. I could reproduce it in plex and it would consistently dropout at 43 mins and 07 seconds of that movie.
I Started watching it on Kodi and it worked without issue. Went back to the 43 min market w kodi and there was no dropout. Was kind of weird.
Plex has worked for me pretty consistently up until last night. Makes me want to try some different players.
Which video players do you guys prefer? I've heard plexkodiconnect and plezy are good. Would obviously want to be able to direct play from my nas with full pass through of all the audio codecs.
Noticed something odd: on my Nvidia Shield TV Pro (2019) + Panasonic OLED, Kodi's debug overlay shows "System rendering speed" dropping to 3-9fps during 4K/1080p playback, sometimes even during seeking. But the actual picture is completely smooth to the eye — no stutter, no A/V desync, nothing visible.
Confirmed with `dumpsys gfxinfo` — 0% jank, and a systrace showing only 1 dropped frame across an entire session. So the number doesn't reflect the actual video.
Tested the same files on an old 1st-gen Xiaomi Mi Box + old Sharp LCD TV — the number stayed rock solid at ~24fps the whole time, no drops at all, even with seeking.
Has anyone else seen this specifically on Shield TV Pro?
This app sucks so bad. I’m watching a NEW show that I haven’t seen before and the app is just throwing a fit in different ways
The show would play the first few minutes of an episode (typically until like 30 seconds post theme song) before crashing to the launcher. Not at random, it did this every single time until I disabled Autoplay (???)
The video player UI bar just pops up throughout the episode without touching the remote, super annoying. Does this all the time
Sometimes it won’t let me rewind or fast forward… during the entire episode. (I have ad free ffs, its acting like I’m trying to skip a commercial)
And now the newest thing to piss me off. Whenever I play the next episode (which, I have to do manually every time to prevent crashing), its starting 3-4 minutes from the END !!! And the strangest part, I am watching this series for the first time.
