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posted by martyb on Sunday May 31 2015, @07:51PM   Printer-friendly
from the when-does-streaming-become-a-river? dept.

At the start of Google I/O on May 28, NVIDIA released the shield console. Available on Amazon.com and Nvidia.com for $199 and reviewed here:

http://anandtech.com/show/9289/the-nvidia-shield-android-tv-review

It supports 4K Netflix streaming out of the box, and is the only device to do so. Now subscribers to Netflix 4K can finally use it. It costs extra, the base Netflix subscription price ($7.99) doesn't include the 4K streaming package.

Is this the start of Google taking over the living room? Games, movies, music, infotainment, all streamed from the cloud.

Fastest Android SoC out there at the moment:

-Quadcore A57
-Maxwell 2 SMM GPU
-3 GB LP4 DRAM
-4K display (OK not included :-P )

It also includes a game controller. The games streaming service might be cheaper than buying a GTX, and could potentially be used as a home server for movie streaming or basic FTP /disk streaming tasks. Should be interesting to see what apps get released for it. It's faster than most embedded systems used such as routers, scanners, and HTPCs. With Kodi + portable HDD, I could keep my desktop PC turned off most of the time now.


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  • (Score: 2) by LoRdTAW on Monday June 01 2015, @11:34AM

    by LoRdTAW (3755) on Monday June 01 2015, @11:34AM (#190643) Journal

    This is why the digital revolution isn't a revolution for the people. I was at a friends house the other day, pretty tech oriented guy (IT). He is happy with fire stick TV, that Amazon Echo thing, Windows HTPC, Windows RDP server, iPad air, etc. And everything works pretty well and most importantly, works for him. Talk to him about Linux and he simply doesn't care about it as he sees zero benefits in using it. He doesn't give a rats ass about free/open source software.

    As long as things are easy to use, people will use them.

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  • (Score: 2) by mcgrew on Monday June 01 2015, @04:26PM

    by mcgrew (701) <publish@mcgrewbooks.com> on Monday June 01 2015, @04:26PM (#190764) Homepage Journal

    Of course he sees zero benefits if those benefits aren't pointed out. A good Linux distro has everything Windows does except the ability to run Microsoft programs, and does them better. Just having no Patch Tuesday, no nagging, no forced reboots, and no registry should be enough, provided you don't need a good spreadsheet.

    --
    mcgrewbooks.com mcgrew.info nooze.org
    • (Score: 2) by LoRdTAW on Monday June 01 2015, @04:52PM

      by LoRdTAW (3755) on Monday June 01 2015, @04:52PM (#190778) Journal

      Sad thing is I have explained the benefits to him and even demonstrated them. He once came to me with disks from his old Linksys NAS which failed to power up. I plugged them into my Linux laptop with an an ATA adapter, ran mdadm with the discovery option and then mounted it. He was very surprised at how easy it was to recover his data.

      I have also shown him my old HTPC and a few other Linux goodies but he just didn't care for it. He is a Windows admin, so there might be bias. But I know him and it is because he wants the cheapest, most simple, and easiest answer to a problem. Setting up a Linux HTPC vs spending 40 bucks on a fire tv stick and installing Kodi is a no brainer to him. So fire TV it is.

    • (Score: 2) by kaszz on Monday June 01 2015, @10:39PM

      by kaszz (4211) on Monday June 01 2015, @10:39PM (#190921) Journal

      You can run MS-Windows software under Linux/BSD using Wine or a hypervisor software solution. Perfect, no. But it may do the job.

  • (Score: 2) by kaszz on Monday June 01 2015, @10:31PM

    by kaszz (4211) on Monday June 01 2015, @10:31PM (#190917) Journal

    He'll be sorry when his is hacked to show porn clips whenever it detects his girlfriend in the room. His voice command box corporation leaks his intimate moanings and secrets to the internets. The Windows HTPC refuses to boot unless he install service pack X which can only be installed when running. The RDP remote login is used to photograph and publish private moments and setup a warez server. iPad will log his movements and snail mail him a brochure on a restaurant that his girlfriend never heard about. Unless all machines just refuse too do anything due some license issue and then hackers brick all machines.

    Ignorance is a bliss until reality slaps you in the face. ;-)