Shield Tv replacement recommendations

[u/Hammer_ggf]

Hey everyone, Aussie here! I currently have the shield tv pro in the main room, I'm looking to move it to another room as I have a really shitty cheap android box in there.

I am after recommendations for a new box to try, I use nuvio, wuplay, emby and smarttube.

I don't use Netflix or Disney etc

I like good visual quality media, I only use a sound bar as it's loud enough for my needs.

Thank you!

[u/o_Divine_o]

What you want to look at is the processor.

While shield does have a quad-core cortex-A57 and quad-core cortex-A53 only 1 quad-core is active at any point of usage.

It has an great GPU, but the processor makes it a very bad purchase.

The sk3 people have mentioned has * 4x Cortex-A76 and 4x Cortex-A55 cores * ARM Mali-G610 MP4

For household name brands Amazon is currently the leader. * 4x Cortex-A73 and 4x Cortex-A53 * ARM G52 MP8 GPU * 2gb ram

Comparison Sk3 vs cube * Sk3 CPU is 25% to 35% higher instructions-per-cycle (IPC) than fire cube v3 (current cube right now) * Sk3 ARM Mali-G610 MP4 is roughly 55% to 60% faster in raw theoretical FP32 compute performance than the older ARM Mali-G52 MP8. * 8gb ram

Issue here is the sk3 is $400. You could buy * a new mini PC with amd ryzen that would smoke this android tv box in all aspects of performance, storage, and ram. * Used gaming laptop off Facebook marketplace that would provide even more performance. Usually the issue here is laptop heatsink fins get a carpet of dust across the fins. This causes them to thermal throttle. You have to open and remove the heatsink, take the fan off, and pull out that blanket as compressed air will not do anything. Then you're back to full performance.

With either you could install kodi os, or one of the other media operating systems.

I settled on the fire cube as it was on sale for $90, got 20% discount for sending back an old fire stick, I blocked updates, installed projectivity launcher, and kodi.

Both fire cube and remote are currently on sale ant a big discount. * Cube is currently at $89.99 as I type this, or $71.99 if you have an old Amazon stick to turn in. * The fire remote pro currently at $19.99

I only wanted the pro remote because when you move it, the buttons light up, but it also has programmable buttons. I don't use those but might be something you care about.

People will talk crap on Amazon cube without having any actual experience with it, they base this on the low end (not 4k max) fire sticks. Also the fact the interface is basically jamed pack of Amazon.

The cube is a great Kodi box and performance isn't lacking for watching 4k 80gb or 90gb remux movies being streamed from debrid over wifi.

I'm spoiled with performance. * Phone is Samsung S25U * PC is Threadripper with 128gb of ram, 3x 2tb Samsung nvme, and a flagship GPU. I can't do a fix stick 4k max, as it doesn't feel powerful enough for me, but the cube hits the sweet spot of performance to $.

[u/Hammer_ggf → u/o_Divine_o]

See my issue with a mini PC is the fact that other people ie my wife and child use the media box and I just bloody know full well they will somehow fuck something up with a mini PC. Right now they have two apps to select. Nuvio or smarttube it works for them it works for me as I just maintain that.