Have built a bit of a dream setup - but I want to move away from a HTPC and use a console for my player. Reason for this, as I will be moving to a rack setup and I will run the PMS from there.
Nvidia shield looks like being a really nice piece of kit. More mature in development and I haven’t really heard too many bad things about them. I was intending to purchase one, though they are not offered directly in Australia, so I will have to import one. Bit annoying.
Xbox One S - without finding detailed specs, It will support 4K with HDR etc. The added bonus here is that the inbuilt kinect IR blaster will be able to turn on and off my other kit - effectively automating the room. I already like the simply media remote Xbox One has.
The Xbox app does not support refresh rate switching and we don’t know if it will support HDR. This alone makes it the worse app but with arguably a better UI.
The SHIELD supports refresh rate switching, DTS-HD MA / LPCM 16bit (8/24bit coming), TrueHD coming, 23.976Hz. Xbox can passthrough these codecs afaik.
I prefer the SHIELD app despite the bugs. It’s only going to get better.
We don’t really know what the One-S will support. It was confirmed to do HDR (10 spec not Dolby) and while its doubtful it may support other features such as refresh switching. Until its tested we won’t know the media capabilities 100% or if will even bitstream HD audio codecs; the current “One” does not while the PS4 does.
I have 2 shields now and while Nvidia has “added” most of these features know that Kodi doesn’t officially support pass through yet for all HD audio functions (SPMC does output) but there’s just been a refresh issue that popped up where enabling 4:4:4 does not stay when auto refresh switching to 23.976. *The Plex client is not as far along as the other apps are for playback so its lagging a bit behind.
I really like the shield, but its not 100% yet and still in “app feature” turmoil, as Nvidia gets features fixed or added we’re still waiting on app implementation and one fix introduces another bug occasionally. In the end I’d also comment that if you want to watch 4k disks the XBOX or PS4.5 is the only choice (other than stand alone players) for a bit. I doubt we’ll be ripping our 4k disks due to size right away unlike blurays and you can’t throw an external disk drive on the shield for playback so its streaming only.
After all the research I have done thus far, there are limitations with all the consoles and their apps at the moment mostly in terms of sound output.
I will put the money into a quality card in my HTPC, which will give me both quality video and sound to my receiver. Perhaps Scorpio will resolve this next year.
