Hi, just need some of your insight. I have two ways of playing back my video files. Either I stream them from my macbook pro over wifi to VLC on my ShieldTV or play them locally on my microSD card loaded into my ShieldTV (sandisk extreme fast card).
Do you think VLC or the ShieldTV will play with the streaming quality over wifi to help smoothness or it should be the same.
tl;dr should i always transfer my 4k video files to my local microsd card to play them on my ShieldTV or if it's smooth wifi playback is fine.
I have a NAS for local playback that my Shield is connected to over the network.
The critical thing to consider is your wireless network speed and the bitrate of the 4K file. If the maximum bitrate gets close to or exceeds the wireless speed, especially if there are other wifi users, you're going to have a bad time.
Direct ethernet is the best option.