With Hulu, Netflix, Sling TV, and more, it is becoming more and more likely that cable will soon be out the window and devices that can stream this type of media will become more of the norm. Well with that being said, Nvidia, a company best known for their video cards are now getting into the set top box game.
The co-founder and CEO of Nvidia Jen-Hsun Huang made some serious announcements. One of the biggest announcements is the plan to go into the user hardware game by selling a $199 Shield, which is a set-top box that will be running Android TV which is going to be launching around May of this year.
This will also be a gaming console which Nvidia has been known for, as it already has made Android gaming handhelds and high end tablets.
With this announcement the company actually put a strong focus on the non-gaming aspect of the shield. From the demo they showed at a post GDC keynote they saw how fluid it was to navigate the interface just like with an Amazon Fire TV or even a Roku box. The shield will also be capable of putting out 4k images, which is making it future proof.
Moving from the media aspect to the gaming aspect we are looking at some decent specs for the price. The Shield will come with a Tegra X1 chip was just unveiled at CES in January. To give a comparison for all you gamers the X1?s GPU has more than twice the power of an Xbox 360 and consumes between 1/20th and 1/5th as much electricity as the 360.
However many of the Android games will not be pushing that chip very hard but another item they showed off with the shield is the Nvidia Shield Store which is a collection of high end games that has been specially brought over to that platform. This is includes some previous Shield games such as Borderlands: The Pre-Sequel, Metal Gear Rising: ReVengeance, and Half-Life 2 just to name a few.
So what do you think about this upcoming set top box? Part gaming console part media stream and at just $199 could it be the next big thing??Comment below and join the debate!