6
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
this post was submitted on 30 Jan 2026
6 points (100.0% liked)
Android
33299 readers
22 users here now
DROID DOES
Welcome to the Android community on Lemmy. Here you can participate in amazing discussions and events relating to all things Android.
The rules for posting and commenting, besides the rules defined here for lemmy.world, are as follows:
Rules
1. All posts must be relevant to Android devices/operating system.
2. Posts cannot be illegal or NSFW material.
3. No spam, self promotion, or upvote farming. Sources engaging in these behavior will be added to the Blacklist.
4. Non-whitelisted bots will be banned.
5. Engage respectfully: Harassment, flamebaiting, bad faith engagement, or agenda posting will result in your posts being removed. Excessive violations will result in temporary or permanent ban, depending on severity.
6. Memes are not allowed to be posts, but are allowed in the comments.
7. Posts from clickbait sources are heavily discouraged. Please de-clickbait titles if it needs to be submitted.
8. Submission statements of any length composed of your own thoughts inside the post text field are mandatory for any microblog posts, and are optional but recommended for article/image/video posts.
Community Resources:
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
Good article.
I wish Nvidia made a launcher without all the ads. Google/Android TV is not bad per se, but then you get ads, and slowdowns... and I just can't be arsed and I go back to Apple TV. (I don't own a Shield. I have Google/Android TV on my Hisense TV.) Unless it's YouTube, then it's the MacBook (because Firefox + uBlock Origin).
The latest Shield is $200 and it's from 2019. I'm thinking a better buy would be a gently used M1 Mac Mini. That will have 256GB storage, 8GB RAM, and I bet it kicks the shit out of the Shield. It's actually unfair to compare a Shield to a whole ass computer but that's what I'm doing. I would get a handheld keyboard/trackpad thing from Amazon for like $20 and control it with that. Set up the overscan, set up a not-admin account with no password, and an admin account with a password. Make the Dock as big as possible, and put Firefox front and center. And maybe some emulators. And the usual, stuff like GamePass, Nvidia GeForce Now, etc. Stuff you'd want on your TV. But like Netflix and shit? Probably best to just go through Firefox.
In the words of Luis Guzman's character in the 2002 film The Count of Monte Cristo, "how is this a bad plan?"
First and foremost, it doesn’t matter at all that it was made in 2019. It plays every video I’ve ever thrown at it and it’s still getting updates.
Second, it’s very easy to replace the launcher, as already mentioned in the thread.
Third, a general purpose computer would almost certainly be more powerful in absolute terms, it would also be much worse in terms of usability for the specific purpose of playing videos and acting like a tv appliance. I’ve used HTPCs before and worked very hard at making them comfortable to use with a TV. No matter how hard I tried, they were always clunky. As soon as I got the shield, I never contemplated using an htpc again.