yeah we're making a video about a chromecast but we have a good reason
this isn't just a chromecast not anymore it's got
a remote okay sure yeah it's still plays
content that is casted from your device and i'm pretty
sure it's chrome plated but it also supports 4k dolby vision and dolby atmos
it can stream games locally and from the cloud it can read external storage and
use Ethernet and it can even make video calls wait
that's just an NVIDIA shield how much is this thing
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since the first one launched for 35 bucks in 2013 chromecasts have been an
inexpensive way to throw content from your phone or your chrome browser up on
the big screen and the low price made sense because it was essentially a
wireless display adapter more than it was a home entertainment device updates
over the years enabled casting in a plethora of Android apps and added
support for features like 4k resolution and 60fps but the chromecast itself has
remained an enigmatic inaccessible dongle like what mysteries
lie beneath your plastic shell well we don't have to wonder anymore because the
chromecast with google tv still does all of that stuff but also has an actual
user interface called google tv
and here's the awesome thing it is not the same google tv that google killed
back in 2014 thank goodness google tv is just a skin on top of
Android tv sort of like the custom Android forks that companies like
samsung pre-install on their phones google tv is also an Android app which
will eventually replace google play movies and play tv but it also seems
like google tv will eventually just be what everyone calls Android tv you know
the whole thing's getting pretty convoluted the point is this thing runs Android tv and is
therefore capable of some of those awesome things we mentioned before
because of the Android app ecosystem of course this is all nothing new there are
a ton of Android tv boxes out there it's just that most of them come with
significant compromises amazon's fire devices are inexpensive but they don't
natively support casting or dongles and you're stuck with alexa and amazon's
fire os version of Android there are tons of chinese-made Android boxes that
look amazing but end up having janky software and well good luck sorting out
any returns or repairs there's the two NVIDIA shield tv models which are
freaking amazing with their ai upscaling and low latency game streaming but
they start at 150 us dollars and hey
what's this ah yes the tivo stream 4k
which is basically the same device as the chromecast with google tv but with
an older processor uglier remote and a worse interface now the experience is
very similar to alternatives from apple amazon and roku it presents movies and
tv shows from across all your streaming services allowing you to browse content
by type and jump right into the app where you can watch it you can search by
voice with google assistant through the remote add to your watch list for later
viewing and like titles to teach google's algorithm about your
preferences look i already told you if canaries isn't it i don't want to see it
and of course you can also directly open streaming apps to use their interfaces
or fire up any other apps that you might have side loaded i mean playing halo on
this thing it's just uh well let's not get carried away yet
the dongle uses the same floppy pebble design as its direct predecessors but
now it looks as slick as you will with a new shirt from ltdstore.com it comes in
three colors and feels real nice in the hand which doesn't matter but hey when
you imagine it back there you'll be like nice there's the HDMI output just like
before but the micro usb port has finally been upgraded to usbc and this
one isn't just for charging that's right you can plug anything in there like the
official 20 chromecast Ethernet adapter
or even a random generic usbc dongle
with Ethernet sd card slot and extra usb
ports just make sure that you choose a dongle that has another usbc port on it to pass
through power and that you use a greater than seven and a half watt power adapter
since that adapter now has to power anything connected to the hub as well as
the chromecast with the hub you can do things like play
video files directly off of external storage devices with a file manager app
you can connect usb peripherals like mice keyboards and controllers if you
don't have wireless ones on hand you can plug in a webcam for big screen video
calls although apps other than google duo seem to require some tinkering and
you can take advantage of a wired internet connection although i should
point out that our speed test results going from wireless to Ethernet were
weird to say the least we doubled our upload speed but then decreased our
download speed i guess such inconsistencies aren't that
surprising given the amlogic s 905 d3 processor and its 4 pinner ARM cortex
855 course and fortunately it didn't affect our
ability to stream even high bit rate blu-ray rips from plex but i though i do
wonder if there's some work that could be done to smooth that out now it's time
to get into why we wanted to take a look at this thing in the first place it's a
good casting an Android tv stick but who didn't see that coming what i wanted to
know was for just fifty dollars how does
it measure up to something like the NVIDIA shield can the chromecast with
google tv game
the answer is yes like don't get me wrong 3d Android
games aren't going to run the smoothest assuming you can even clear enough space
to install them on the chromecast's 4 gigs of usable storage but they do run
and as for game streaming well you can do it both in-home and from the cloud
Android tv optimized versions of apps like steam link moonlight and even
GeForce now are directly available from the play store and performances
well it's as good as your network connection
here at the office we experienced virtually no lag streaming games from a
local pc even on wi-fi and just a little
bit more playing cloud games via GeForce now but that's because our networking
setup here is balls to the wall at home however riley noticed
significant lag streaming both from his gaming pc and from the cloud and
strangely both over Wi-Fi and a wired
connection though like maybe it's not that strange we did note in his tech
upgrade video that his home router is pretty awful riley really though your
home router is awful you gotta upgrade that i didn't know who uses the one from
their isp now i know
if you do have decent internet you could even try out some cloud gaming apps that
you're uh not supposed to
Android tv doesn't have support for xcloud or stadia yet but you can
sideload them and play games just fine if by just fine you mean with
significant lag because gaming on these apps wasn't great even here in the
office and i can see why they're not officially available yet interestingly
though there was significantly less lag in all of those game streaming apps on
the shield tv pro which riley also took
home for comparison so there you have it if you want a super
optimized game streaming experience the shield tv might actually be worth the
extra hundred dollars for anyone else though this is basically
the only streaming sticky floppy doodle
that matters unless of course you're one of the dozens of you who are paying
stadium members in which case support is coming next year so i expect between now
and then google will either a do some optimization magic to make the
experience real nice on the chromecast with google tv
or b just straight up cancel stadia like they do with everything it's basically
inevitable check out the new wd black sn850 NVMe
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both reliability and performance and it reaches up to 7 000 megabytes per second
reads and up to 5300 megs per second for rights to get you in your games quicker
especially as games get optimized for faster ssds it can handle up to 1
million iops and you can also monitor your drive and take control with the
downloadable wd black dashboard which helps you optimize your performance
check it out at the micro center links below if you guys enjoyed this video
maybe check out our full review of the NVIDIA shield tv it really is fantastic
if you've got an extra 100 to 150 to spend