Yesterday, NVIDIA announce GeForce Now, the company’s new game streaming service. Today, that service is available on all SHIELD Android TV devices as part of a massive new OTA that’s chock-full of stuff.
The star of the show is undoubtedly GeForce Now, which brings over 50 streaming PC games to SHIELD. The service is free for the first three months to all SHIELD owners, and after that it’ll run $7.99 a month, which is an extremely reasonable price for all-you-can-eat gaming (at least in my opinion). Aside from Now, however, Update 2.0 also brings support for native Android games in 4K; here’s a list of what will run in Ultra HD right out of the gate:
- Beach Buggy Racing
- Bombsquad
- Hardwood Solitaire IV
- Riptide GP 2
- Kosmik Revenge
- Video Poker Duel
- Leo’s Fortune
- Machinarium
- Meltdown
- Never Alone
- Samurai II
- Sky Gamblers: Storm Raiders
That’s a relatively short list for now, but more developers should be adding 4K to their titles moving forward.
This update isn’t all about gaming, either — there’s plenty to love for movie/video enthusiasts. Like new codecs!
- Expanded codec and container support:
- Adds pass-through support for Dolby TrueHD and DTS-HD Master Audio lossless audio*
- Adds MPEG2, VC-1, and WMV9 hardware-acceleration*
- Adds M2TS, ASF, and WMV container support for VC-1
- Adds WMA audio support (including WMA Pro, and WMA Lossless)
There’s also support for 23.976 Hz playback, as well as built-in overscan compensation for TVs that don’t include the option.
Finally, there are a handful of other, smaller enhancements, including an improved experience for YouTube and Netflix, the ability to transfer files form USB to microSD using ES File Explorer, the option to turn off SHIELD controller by holding the NVIDIA button for 6 seconds, and lower audio latency for gameplay.
All in all, I think this might be the most significant SHIELD OTA to date. It’s available now on all 16 GB and 500 GB units, so go ahead and pull it down. For a closer look at the full changelog, hit the source link below.
- Source:
- NVIDIA