My Experience with Streaming boxes

by pickoala

This is going to be a long post and I just wanted to share my experience with different devices.

My Use-Case : Mainly, only Netflix and playing back the local files on my NAS, using Plex or just Kodi. First only 1080p, but I knew a 4K TV was around the corner. Bonus Points for Passthrough (DTS and Atmos).

The four devices:

  • Amazon Fire TV Stick (non 4K)
  • Xiaomi Mi Box S
  • NVIDIA Shield TV Pro (2019 obviously)
  • Apple TV 4K

I know, the Fire TV Stick is not even running Android TV, but it's so cheap, I had to at least try it. And the Apple TV? I am sorry to bring that one up, but I'll come to that later.

Amazon Fire TV Stick

So this guy is an absolute disaster. The home menu needs forever to load, sometimes, it just decides to have no coneection, even though my wifi is stable and fast (100 Mbit/s). I tried using Kodi, but the app is so slow, that I sent that guy back after two days. I cannot recommend it at all.

Next.

Xiaomi Mi Box S

This one is definitely a better machine, does 4K, and after playing with Kodi for a while, I was about to settle. The remote has some seriously loud buttons, which makes the remote feel super cheap, even the Fire TV one is way better. You get what you pay for in this case.

Problems started, when I bought a 5.1 home cinema system (Teufel Ultima 40) and tried passthrough with Kodi. And that's when the Mi Box showed its limitations. While DTS and AC3 passthrough are possible, it could not handle DTS:X or Dolby Atmos, it simply went down to Dolby Digital and DTS.

Also, Plex had the offer to get the lifetime pass for about 30% less, and as that makes media tagging on different devices so much easier, I went for it.

Unfortunately, the Plex App had big problems on the Mi Box. Some files had no sound or just made static noise on the highest volume. It was poker with my hearing and my speakers, so I knew that I will not use the Box for too long.

I decided to make the next step and get to the big boy. The new Shield TV was introduced, our local retailer had some great deals, and I got the 219€ Shield TV Pro for only 197€.

NVIDIA Shield TV Pro

I expected the best, and the Shield TV delivered. The pure speed of this thing is amazing. Open Apps, switch between them, everything. Plex played everything I threw at it, passthrough worked. It could do Atmos in the Netflix App. The remote was an upgrade, solid buttons, but the giant Netflix Button got on my nerves about a day later, at least the box is fast, so switching back from Netflix was done in a second.

Well, in early December, a LG OLED was on sale, so I finally made a wish come true and got one for just under 1K.

And while everything seemed fine, the box did 4K60 output, Dolby Vision and HDR worked and even the 4K AI upsampling did a great job, I noticed that one thing that I didn't want to see: the "most powerful Android device on the planet" had the whole UI in 1080p. As I am sitting really close to my TV, thats not what a 200 bucks streaming Box should do.

I know, If the video is in 4K, what is your problem??? Well, This thing is marketed as a 4K Streaming Box, so why on earth are my subtitles not pixel perfect and smooth? I know, it's nitpicking, but I paid 200€. I tried everything, googled around, tried the adb shell wm ... trick, but that only created UI-bugs.

And that's when I considered the competition. The Apple TV 4K. I got one for 177€ brand new, and had nothing to loose.

Apple TV 4K

First thing that got me: The Apple TV can output the whole UI in 4K60 with Dolby Vision. It looks absolutely amazing, the OLED was finally pushed to its true potential.

And I noticed many great features that Android for some reason does not as well as Apple:

  • skipping to a certain position in a movie is way better, you simply swipe on the touchpad and get to the time you want way easier, than on Android. Over there, every App uses its own Player UI, so in Plex for example it takes 2 Minutes to skip to the last ten Minutes of a 2 hour movie.
  • Screensavers: as you might know, new OLED screens can burn in if they show the same picture for too long. So the screensaver videos, that Apple makes the ATV download are super cool. There is also no self marketing ("Chromecast bla bla") on the screensaver.

I have to admit, some functions are way cooler, if you use an iPhone. You can use your iPhone to write in any searchbar, the buttons to control whatever you're playing on the ATV just appear on the iPhone lockscreen and of course AirPlay.

There are also some downsides to the Apple TV:

  • no Kodi (That's gonna be a dealbreaker, I know), so Plex it is
  • sideloading is not an option, so emulators, Kodi and many more won't happen without a jailbreak
  • no 4K upsampling like the Shield
  • YouTube can't even play 4K Videos
  • no external devices over USB
  • real passthrough is not available, the ATV decodes the stream and pushes it as PCM. I can't hear a difference, so that's not a problem

The unique features, however - AirPlay, Siri, the remote and of course, some real 4K interface with Dolby Vision - were the reasons for me to keep the ATV and sell my Shield.

And as the Shield is sold out literally everywhere, I was able to sell it on eBay for 300€.

Conclusion

The Apple TV is definitely not the best device for everyone. While it does some things exceptionally well, it has its downsides.

So, if you really just want to watch Netflix and YouTube, or use Kodi in general, the Mi Box is definitely your boy. It has some annoyances (looking at you, Prime Video that I had to sideload) but it gets the job done. My parents use the Mi Box now, it hasn't failed them yet.

If you have some 4K-HDR content that needs to be watched, the Shield TV Pro (and of course any older Version) is so much better, that it is worth the price. 2x USB 3.0 and RJ45-Network are just the icing on the cake, you wont have any issues, the NVIDIA system is great and continually updated. Mind that fat Netflix button on the remote, and the 1080p UI, but if you don't care about that, you'll become great friends.

The Apple TV is the device for people who just want to enjoy content. It will never lag, plays literally everything, and supports every major streaming service.

So those are my thoughts. If you have any questions, feel free to ask.

Have a great weekend, everyone!

Edit: formatting is hard

mindoversoul

Good breakdown. The Apple TV has two major deal breakers, though. No 4k YouTube, and I'd rather have 4k on the video service I use the most than a 4k menu system.

And you have to have an Apple ID and with my history with Apple, you could not pay me to have an iCloud account, ever again. Apple is the single worst company in existence when it comes to online services and I have zero desire to trust them with my money.

pawdog

Yeah, not sure what prompted you to include the Fire TV Stick (Non 4K). It absolutely should have been discontinued by Amazon a year ago but they still sell them to unsuspecting newbies.

bgeerdes

Re your comment that the apple tv 4k doesn't upsample.

Every device outputting 4k has to upsample content that isn't 4k. If not two things might happen:

  1. Original size video surrounded by black to create the 4k frame size

  2. OS would by default output at the resolution of the video

Neither of these happen with any streaming device by default (although you can change output resolution to match the video with apps like MrMC on the Shield TV). Therefore, all 4k devices upsample. The quality of the upsampling matters, of course, but this marketing of Nvidia seems to have really confused people the last few months into thinking other devices don't upsample.

P.S. The Apple TV 4k has a more modern GPU than even the 2019 Shield TV and has always been lauded as a very capable upsampler.

darknum

Apple: Names a product 4K, cannot provide 4K on the most used video app in the whole world. How about no?

Good guide though.

ecureuil

I do AirPlay with my Shield using an app named AirPin (cheap paid app). Works great. Google Assistant on my iPhone works also perfectly with my Shield. Can you extend the Siri bit?

z0mghii

For the shield cons:

You can dl aerial dream for the apple screen savers https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.codingbuffalo.aerialdream

You can use Nvidia shield app on your phone to type/cursor/voice/et

You can enable 4k ui on the shield but it causes a bug with displaying the app icons in the menu. Hoping next android TV update will have 4k

wyrdough

Funny enough, my 2015 Shield randomly started rendering the UI in 4k last year and stuck itself that way. I assumed that at some point they had intentionally updated it..

jeremiah_808

So in your experience the mibox loads kodi and it's menus more faster then the firestick 4k? I got the stick rn but am looking for something else. I primarily use youtube tv and kodi, don't need 4k streaming.