What set top boxes do you all prefer these days? Is ShieldTV still the end all?

[tawnytim]

We're using a Roku Ultra box on our main tv.  It's not bad - gets the job done.  It definitely requires transcode at times though so I was wondering what the current Jellyfin darling is in terms of Direct Play King - save for VC1.  I was looking at the Shield Pro but I have to say, at that price point, the remote feels really cheap.  Not sure if they're still made this way but I had(long time back) Apple TV and the remote felt great.  All aluminum, etc..  I've seen these "Zidoo" boxes on amazon but no idea of their capabilities.  Basically we watch YouTube, Amazon Video and stream from our JF server.

Thoughts?

[tmsrxzar]

I use a Zidoo Z9X Pro and it is very premium, supports *everything including VC1
but with that you have to use the Zidoo androidtv fork
and with Jellyfin it won't do BDMV or BDISO, the rest of the specs listed are actually accurate which is shocking this day and age

https://www.zidoo.tv/Product/index/model...3D%3D.html

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Shield TV is very dated and sluggish plus lots of issue reports on github that it won't play DTSHD
for my shield i used Kodi but that's another mess of a product just to make your hardware it's most functional
and yes the remote is rather meh

[jimmyjammy]

I use an Apple TV 4K with Infuse 7 as the client & am very happy. Everything plays direct (no transcoding) & haven't had any codec problems.Been using this combo for yeaes & am completely satisfied

[tmsrxzar]

I use an Apple TV 4K with Infuse 7 as the client & am very happy. Everything plays direct (no transcoding) & haven't had any codec problems.Been using this combo for yeaes & am completely satisfied

no Dolby Vision profile 7? https://community.firecore.com/t/lates-i...mkvs/43187

does it do audio passthrough? Atmos/DTS:X?

[tawnytim]

I use an Apple TV 4K with Infuse 7 as the client & am very happy. Everything plays direct (no transcoding) & haven't had any codec problems.Been using this combo for yeaes & am completely satisfied

Picked up an ATV 4K last night.  That thing runs beautifully!

[jimmyjammy]

Cheers! glad it works for you. The next Infuse update will feature "Native Profile 8 Dolby Vision (tvOS)". Infuse supports Dolby Atmos when using E-AC3 audio tracks. Apple TV does not support DTS-X or TrueHd but I have had no problems with audio  - Infuse for Apple TV supports up to 7.1 channels of 24-bit 48KHz audio in a wide variety of audio codec formats. This page explains more: https://support.firecore.com/hc/en-us/ar...tions-tvOS

[tmsrxzar]

Cheers! glad it works for you. The next Infuse update will feature "Native Profile 8 Dolby Vision (tvOS)". Infuse supports Dolby Atmos when using E-AC3 audio tracks. Apple TV does not support DTS-X or TrueHd but I have had no problems with audio  - Infuse for Apple TV supports up to 7.1 channels of 24-bit 48KHz audio in a wide variety of audio codec formats. This page explains more: https://support.firecore.com/hc/en-us/ar...tions-tvOS

must be just me that thinks a replacement for a shield should actually support more than the shield and not less

but, hey, yea great news in a future release you will have the profile 8 dolby vision that shield already does
except bluray uses profile 7 so ...

seems like the user's standards are low enough to think that apple thing is better so just go with it ... i guess


(i know sarcasm doesn't relay very well via text medium so just in case it wasn't clear; that entire thing is sarcasm)

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and shield doing more is kinda of sad since i think shield is garbage so there's that too

[jimmyjammy]

Well Clearly you're not an Apple fan. Infuse has supported Dolby Vision profile 7 for a year (which I thought was implied by mentioning the coming Profile 8 update. Which, in turn, implies that Apple Tv supports Dolby Vision profiles 7 & 8 . The Zidoo seems to have a lot of problems with crashes & system hangs & generally gets mediocre reviews. Infuse has supported VC-1 since 2016 when it was Infuse 4. When is Zidoo getting DV 8 ? or maybe that's only for low standards. While I do enjoy sarcasm, & often employ it myself, I'm afraid I'll have to rate yours(not unlike your Zidoo Z9X Pro) at a solid 3.4 stars
Monkey Zi Monkey Zidoo !

P.S. - Just a quick tip. For sarcasm to be successful you should never have to tell people you are using it

[Betonhaus]

are there any TV devices where you can effectively set it to launch jellyfin on startup and have it be the only app?

[TheDreadPirate]

A PC? None of the existing TV clients can do this. Neither from an application level nor an OS level.