CES 2017: New Nvidia Shield TV Comes With 4K HDR Streaming, Google Assistant

Nvidia has announced a refresh of its Shield TV streaming and gaming set-top box at CES 2017. The new Nvidia Shield TV delivers better streaming quality, support for Google Assistant as well as better overall performance.

The new Nvidia Shield TV now comes with 4K HDR video support. That feature will only be taken advantage of by people who have 4K HDR TVs as well as those subscribed to services that offer that type of streaming quality. Amazon Prime Video and Netflix already have some 4K HDR content, but users will also be able to stream regular 4K content from the likes of YouTube, Vudu and Google Play, as pointed out by Android Authority.

Nvidia claims that the new Shield TV offers three times the performance of any other streaming device that’s available in the market. A short hands-on demo of "Titanfall 2" streaming at 4K at 60Hz ran smoothly with no lag, according to PC Gamer.The new streamer also comes with the newly redesigned gamepad and the same remote.

Even with added power, Nvidia also managed to make its streaming device’s chassis 40 percent smaller than its predecessor. Nvidia didn’t specify what it actually changed on the new Shield TV, but it appears as though the most of the improvements were made possible through software optimization. The new model is still powered by an octa-core Tegra X1 ARM chip (quad-core Cortex-A57 & quad-core Cortex-A53) paired with 3GB of RAM.

Speaking of software, the device still runs Android, but this time around it supports Google Assistant, the same voice-activated digital assistant that’s on the Pixel and Pixel XL. The new Shield TV will be the first to support the software, but other Android-powered streamers and TVs running version 6.0 (Marshmallow) and up will be getting the feature as well.

Users will be able to simply say “Ok Google” to bring up the digital assistant and give out a command. Users will be able to ask Google Assistant to play specific content on services like Netflix or even YouTube. Like on the Pixel phones, the Google Assistant on the Nvidia Shield TV will be able to respond to contextual commands, according to TechCrunch.

Lastly, there are two versions of the Nvidia Shield TV, the $200 16GB model and the $300 Pro model that comes with 500GB of storage. Both models are available to pre-order now and are slated to start shipping later this month.