Nvidia Shield TV 16gb or 500gb

I’m interested in moving my PMS (plex media server) from a Win 10 box to an Nvidia Shield TV. Why is the Pro 500gb model recommended over the 16gb model?

I was hoping to buy the 16gb Nvidia Shield TV, a 128gb USB stick for adoptable storage and a 2TB or greater USB external hard drive for storing movies, home videos and Plex DVR recordings. If I get the Pro model I’d skip the USB stick.

This help page explains the recommendation, as well as some other important information about using Plex on the Shield.

There’s also a forum where people have been discussing their experiences with Plex on the Shield models.

I was looking at the link below on Shield TV limitations and I’m guessing something changed in the past week or two. I was quite certain that it had recommended using the 500GB model because even with adoptable storage on a USB stick, that Plex would still be restricted by the built in 16gb for things like transcoding and something else. I already have an extra 128gb USB stick and would rather save the $100 (I also don’t need 500GB and don’t like that it’s a hard drive). But based on what I now see, I don’t see any difference.

support.plex.tv/hc/en-us/articles/221099648-Limitations-When-Running-Plex-Media-Server-on-NVIDIA-SHIELD

You likely already bought one, but if not, currently we don’t support moving the Data folder of PMS to adopted storage, so the 500gb is better.

I ended up buying the 16GB model. I put in a 2 TB external hard drive for the media. I Also have a 128gb USB stick with a 6 inch USB 3.0 cable (the USB ports are too close together for a USB stick) as adoptable storage. When I watch recorded TV on the TV connected directly to the Shield TV, I can skip through commercials quickly with very minimal or no apparent lag. Streaming to an Xbox One or Apple TV 4 I found that skipping through commercials have a delay of usually 3 seconds but sometimes as much as 30 seconds and it’s more likely to be worse on longer videos (I’ve tried wired and wireless network connections). DVD movies compressed down to less than 1.5GB seem fine (streaming or not), but then again I pretty much just use pause, stop and play, there are no commercials to skip through.

Here’s what’s plugged into my Shield TV:

  • Seagate Backup Plus Slim 2TB Portable External hard drive USB 3.0, STRDR2000101
  • USB stick is a SanDisk Extreme 128GB USB 3. Flash Drive, SDCZ80-128G-G46 (I tried a Lexar LJDS75-256ABNL and it made the Shield TV laggy).

This doesn’t seem related to Photos or Personal Videos. Do you want me to move this to DVR / Live TV?

Yes, you are absolutely correct, please move. Sorry, I guess that I had somehow overlooked the category when I had posted.