Nvidia Shield TV 2017

Nvidia Shield TV 2017 is a Android TV media player that I have been using with my home TV since 2018.

• Specs: Model number is P2897, processor is Nvidia Tegra X1, RAM is 3GB and has internal storage of 16GB. 2 USB ports enable adding 2 USB storage devices that can be used for expanding internal storage (for apps) or for playing your own media files.

• External storage: Plug in any USB storage device formatted with FAT32/exFAT that has your video files to play it on the Shield.

  • I found that this device can also be used to copy over .apk installer files and install them by clicking on them from a file explorer app. (You would need to install the file explorer app from Google Play Store first.) Android will require you to provide the permissions to the file explorer app to install such unsafe files.

• Expand internal storage: By 2022, Android TV had gotten so large that the internal storage ran out even with a few apps. To expand the internal storage, I added an old USB harddisk and requested Shield to use it as internal storage in the Settings.

• Streaming services: The Shield has been primarily used to watch streaming content with Youtube and Netflix apps.

• Play video files: Install a video player app like VLC to play video files you have in internal storage or in the USB storage you have plugged in.

• Plex Media Server: Installing the Plex app enables you to both watch your content from your other Plex server or use the Shield as the Plex server. I could not get this working since it would not show the video files I had on my USB harddisk. Nor could I connect to this Shield server from https://app.plex.tv on any computer since it complained that it was not secure. 💁‍♂️

• Network share: Both internal storage or any USB storage plugged in to the Shield can be shared using SMB for access from other devices on the local network. The server name (default: shield), username and password can all be customized in the Settings. This network share on Shield can be mounted both from Windows and from Linux. Do take note of the IP address of the Shield since sometimes using the server/hostname does not work. This is a convenient way to add media files directly to the Shield from a local computer. Note that I found this to be incredibly slow though.