Most of the time I turn it off and watch whatever the natural feeders because in the end it just looks so crunchy it’s intolerable.
I have to be honest, I also do not think the AI upscaling is particularly good. No Britt box, no ITV live channels, several other major services lacking support. Google is so integrated that you quite literally cannot get away from reporting back to them.Īdd to that the fact that they’ve just taken over the screen with adverts effectively, and all I have is regret buying this.Īdditionally in the UK things are quite limited. I need to use smart DNS it’s basically impossible on this device. It stutters, frame rate matching is abysmal, mine constantly reboots itself, and worst of all it cannot stop spying on me.
The shield TV pro is absolutely terrible at just about everything. I’m going to chime in here with an unpopular opinion around these parts. Probably way more information tha you asked for. I know it has Google assistant and Alexa integration built in. I have not experimented using voice with xbox. Xbox is last because I place a premium on interacting with my streamer using voice. As a streaming device, I rank the shield first followed by the Chromecast with Google tv, followed by the fire stick 4K, followed by the Xbox. I have the Chromecast with Google TV, and the fire stick 4k, on secondary televisions. The streaming dongles have much better voice integration. Purchase a low-cost streaming dongle just for streaming services. Use it for all of your local content and Plex for the lossless 3D audio, and the display rate change. However, if I were in your shoes, I think I would purchase the Xbox as a gaming platform. I guess the bottom line is that if you can live with the shortcomings of the Xbox as a dedicated streamer, then you can do that.
But I have been experimenting with it for it's streaming capabilities.
I don't use my series X as a dedicated streamer. Disney plus, HBO max, hulu, do not force HDR. I have no idea why the app developers are forcing HDR in the Netflix app. I did find that the Netflix app as of a few days ago plays everything in hdr. Since the PCM output will be based on a lossy input that the streaming service provides So until Netflix and Hulu and the other apps take advantage of bitstream pass through, their audio will be converted to, best case, 7.1 PCM depending on how you have the Xbox configured. The app developers have to do something special with their app to take advantage of bitstream pass through API.
So native DD+, Atmos, etc works with Disney plus and HBO Max. In terms of audio, Microsoft recently fixed the bitstream pass through. In terms of refresh rate, at least with the shield you can set the output of The Shield always be 4K 23.976 HZ.
You could download the refresh rate app for the shield but I don't think that's being developed and supported anymore. I stopped using the beta feature months ago because it was crap. And the beta feature only works on some apps. Shield does not do a good job at changing the display refresh to match the source. I was unable to compare that to the Xbox Upscaler.
As a streamer, the series S should be comparable to the series X. I have the Xbox series X, and Nvidia shield pro 2019.