If only Apple added support for bitstreaming I’d replace my Shield with an AppleTV in a heartbeat.
Don’t get me wrong, the Shield plays everything you throw at it. The hardware is great but the software is so janky. It’s often slow to respond to input, it needs a reboot every couple of days because it just gets more laggy and choppy over time. Sometimes it just forgets my TV supports Dolby Vision until I reboot it. Support from Nvidia seems to have dried up as well.
Just posted about ATV switch from shield myself. I agree with you, the bitstream issue is noticeable on my atmos setup for sure, but all and all I got so fed up with the exact issues you described that I threw in the towel and switched. Overall I think it’s worth it. With some adjustments in my sub crossover I’ve compensated for sound issues a little. I held out because there were all these rumors about Apple finally releasing a new appletv, but now looks unlikely to happen.
You have shield or pro? I had both and at first I really didn’t find a whole lot of difference in performance, but for some reason with time the shield tube really started having far more issues than the pro.
I have the 2018 pro. The problem with lack of bitstreaming is that no matter what you adjust, you won’t get 3D audio (i.e. height speakers) out of the LPCM streams. You can do DD+Atmos on streaming services but you miss out on TrueHD+Atmos and DTS:X on bluray backups. That’s not something I want to give up.
If only Apple added support for bitstreaming I’d replace my Shield with an AppleTV in a heartbeat.
Don’t get me wrong, the Shield plays everything you throw at it. The hardware is great but the software is so janky. It’s often slow to respond to input, it needs a reboot every couple of days because it just gets more laggy and choppy over time. Sometimes it just forgets my TV supports Dolby Vision until I reboot it. Support from Nvidia seems to have dried up as well.
Just posted about ATV switch from shield myself. I agree with you, the bitstream issue is noticeable on my atmos setup for sure, but all and all I got so fed up with the exact issues you described that I threw in the towel and switched. Overall I think it’s worth it. With some adjustments in my sub crossover I’ve compensated for sound issues a little. I held out because there were all these rumors about Apple finally releasing a new appletv, but now looks unlikely to happen. You have shield or pro? I had both and at first I really didn’t find a whole lot of difference in performance, but for some reason with time the shield tube really started having far more issues than the pro.
I have the 2018 pro. The problem with lack of bitstreaming is that no matter what you adjust, you won’t get 3D audio (i.e. height speakers) out of the LPCM streams. You can do DD+Atmos on streaming services but you miss out on TrueHD+Atmos and DTS:X on bluray backups. That’s not something I want to give up.