Shield TV 2019 refresh rate, resolution, and upscaling open questions

Plex Players Streaming Devices
1

Hello everyone !

Introduction

I’ve just received my new Shield TV Pro 2019 and feel a bit lost regarding all the framerate and resolution settings available across the Plex app and the OS itself.

Please note that I’ve done a fair bit of research on the subject, but didn’t manage to find answers detailed (yet simple) enough for me (tech guy here, but still relatively newbie in the AV department), hence this topic.

Finally, this topic might look like it could have been split in two (framerate VS upscaling), but it seems to me that these two aspects serve the same recurrent purpose : obtain the best picture quality, while being the most difficult to grasp (compared to “basic bitrate stuff” where “higher is better”).

Regarding framerate

The 2019 Shield model has a “Match frame rate” feature, whereas Plex has its “Refresh Rate Switching” toggle that I’ve been using since its integration on my 2017 Shield.

From what I’ve understood, they both serve the same purpose (i.e. : sync the output refresh rate with the media’s one).

I tend to prefer Plex’s implementation as it’s an automatic switch, whereas with the Shield you have to open the settings menu while your content is playing and fire the “Match frame rate” quick setting every time. Plus the Shield’s implementation is in Beta…

What do you think about the two implementations ? Is there any advantage in using one over the other (aside from the “manual vs automatic” aspect) ?

Regarding resolution and upscaling

The 2019 Shield TV has 3 upscaling modes :

  • AI-Enhanced
  • Enhanced
  • Basic

I swear I can’t find any official information about the differences between the three options. All I could find is this post on AVS Forum (through this reddit), although this seems to be a subjective opinion.

I don’t want to start yet another topic about the AI-Enhanced upscaling, I just would like to understand the differences beetwen the three options, and how they integrate with Plex’s own “Resolution Switching”.

From what I’ve understood, Plex’s implementation aims at switching the output resolution to the media’s one, so that, for example, the TV performs the upscaling instead of the Shield (I’ve just learned through my researches that a fair number of users were asking for this feature because of poor quality issues when the upscaling is done by the Shield. I personally never noticed that with my 2017 Shield, but I also never tried to compare the two approaches).

I came up with the following matrix of possible combinations of settings, assuming playback of 1080p content on a 4K TV, with the Shield set to output a 4K signal by default :

Shield’s upscaling mode Plex’s “Resolution Switching” Device performing the upscale (Shield or TV)
AI-Enhanced ON
Enhanced ON
Basic ON
AI-Enhanced OFF
Enhanced OFF
Basic OFF

Here’s the raw markdown if you want to complete the matrix in your answer :

Raw matrix markdown 
| Shield's upscaling mode | Plex's "Resolution Switching" | Device performing the upscale (Shield or TV) |
|-------------------------|:-----------------------------:|----------------------------------------------|
| AI-Enhanced             | ON                            |                                              |
| Enhanced                | ON                            |                                              |
| Basic                   | ON                            |                                              |
| AI-Enhanced             | OFF                           |                                              |
| Enhanced                | OFF                           |                                              |
| Basic                   | OFF                           |                                              |

Here are my questions for this part :

  1. Could you fill the matrix above (or provide another one if I’m missing something) ?
  2. What are the differences between the Shield’s 3 upscaling modes (mostly between “Enhanced” and “Basic”, as we all know what the AI mode is by now) ?
  3. What is the best combination of settings (subjectively and/or objectively, if that’s even possible), regarding resolution, to obtain the best picture quality ?
  4. (this question is related to the previous one) What do you think about the Shield’s upscaling in general ? Have you indeed experienced poor quality compared to your TV’s upscaling ? For those who were able to compare both the 2017 and 2019 Shield models, is there really a difference in that department between the two (aside from the AI upscaling), as suggested in some places, like in the AVS post above ?

Any additional information/explanation or link to great external resources are highly welcome =)

Thanks !

Scentle5S

1 Like
2

My guess is you won’t find any details. Very likely these are proprietary algorithms so they won’t share much about them. My guess would be:

basic - straight upscale
enhanced - upscale with anti-aliasing
AI-enhanced - better version of anti-aliasing

Plex doesn’t do any upscaling, it’s all done by the Shield. If enabled in Plex, the Shield will do the upscaling. If off, then the signal is sent to the TV as-is and it’s up to your TV to so any scaling.

3

Thanks for your answer.

That makes sense, I didn’t even think of that. I figured they could at least summarize the 3 modes the way you did : I won’t be able to reverse engineer their algorithms with that level of details, but that would still be more informative for the customer.

Sorry but I’m still struggling to understand this part. When you say “If enabled in Plex” and “If off”, what do you mean exactly ? I suppose you meant respectively “If Resolution Switching is ON” and “If Resolution Switching is OFF”, but that doesn’t seem to match the results of my testing (see below).

I’ve done some testing with 720p content on a 1080p TV (don’t have my 4K TV with me right now) and here are the results :

Use case # Plex’s “Resolution Switching” Signal resolution according to the TV Shield allowing upscaling (*)
1 ON 720p Yes
2 OFF 1080p Yes
(*) When playing 1080p content on a 1080p TV, the Shield clearly states that upscaling isn’t required.
  1. This seems to be the opposite of what you said above :
    • when Resolution Switching is ON, the TV says it receives a 720p signal, suggesting the Shield changed its resolution to 720p (to match the one of the content), leaving the TV do the upscaling ;
    • when Resolution Switching is OFF, the TV says it receives a 1080p signal, suggesting the Shield is doing the upscaling ;
  2. I don’t understand why the Shield is offering to do the upscaling in use case #1, as I thought this was the way to tell it to send the signal as-is and precisely not do any upscaling ;
  3. Therefore, I don’t understand how the TV can receive a 720p signal in use case #1, as the Shield seems to still offer and perform upscaling (I can see the difference going back and forth between basic and AI upscaling), so the signal received by the TV should be 1080p in the end, right ?
  4. In the end, the fact that the Shield lets me use upscaling (whether AI or basic) in both use cases makes me thing that the TV is never doing any upscaling (even though use case #1 seems to suggest the opposite), so how are we supposed to disable completely the Shield’s upscaling ?

Sorry if these questions might seem trivial but, as you can see, I just can’t wrap my head around this as all the results of my testing seem contradictory. It “works” in the sense that I can watch my content regardless of the settings used, but I really want to understand “how” it works underneath.

4

You are right. I’m also seeing the opposite behavior. I’ll have to check with the team to see if I’m misunderstanding that option.

5

Got some clarification. I was thinking of it backwards. That setting controls the TV, which then tells the Shield what to do. So “Resolution switching on” means the TV will adjust it’s input to match the video, so the Shield will then output to match the TV.

This matches with the other setting of “refresh rate switching” which also makes the TV match the video.

6

Thanks for the clarification ! That changes everything.

But, if I understand correctly, that means that the Shield outputs in 720p (supposing 720p content, 1080p TV, resolution switching ON) and, therefore, doesn’t do any upscaling, right ? If that’s the case, then how is the Shield able to perform “AI upscaling” (like I said : I do see a difference when toggling the feature ON/OFF in this scenario, so it is indeed doing something) while not doing any upscaling ? Or does that mean that “AI upscaling” is just a fancy marketing name instead of something like “AI sharpening filter” ?

7

Like I said, these were just my guesses as to what they do, but it’s probably all marketing to make it sound more advanced.

8

So something that I’ve noticed since the 8.2 update (might have been there before but I didn’t notice) is the Demo Mode which gives you a split screen between basic and AI enhanced.

Now my eyesight isn’t great so keep that in mind with the following:

I can’t tell a difference between the AI upscaler and the TV’s upscaler. I think I can see a bit of difference between basic and AI enhanced.

I’ve left AI enhanced on and turned off resolution switching on Plex because it is better when you go between episodes of 1080p tv shows. I found that if it kept switching resolution it would hang between episodes and/or go out of sync.

I don’t have that issue with the upscaler.

9

With plex resolution switching ON the TV receives the original resolution and does any upscaling internally.

With plex resolution switching OFF the shield will use basic or ai upscale depending on the shield system setting.

You can toggle between basic and ai by the top right button on the remote in order to compare.

Ai upscale doesn’t work on all content, the on screen display will say unsupported if so.

10

This topic was automatically closed 90 days after the last reply. New replies are no longer allowed.