The Nvidia Shield was last refreshed six years ago. Is it more capable than a Roku? Yes, but it's also double the cost. It is far more capable, especially with local media servers. However, with online streaming providers, the Shield has little over a Roku, and in at least one place the Roku is superior. The Shield does not support HDR content on YouTube. While that is important to some, it's not to others. I believe the same restriction applies to YouTube TV.
In general, there is no one single streaming player that "does it all". For online providers, Roku is as good as if not better than other players on the market. While Roku does lack some things, it also has things others don't. That's why I use both Roku, Shield, Fire TV and Onn Streaming player in my home, so everything is covered.
Their hardware was very high end back then, and even today, thanks to a competent team of developers which Roku doesn't have, and more regular updates than Roku has (that improve things instead of break them), their software and performance is, yes, better than I'm getting with Ultra's and the best Roku hardware.
For example, through updates Shield's support 120hz but Roku's can't go past 60, both use bottlenecked HDMI 2.0b.
I have to say though, sounds a lot like you're avoiding the entire topic which is Roku's heavily flawed and broken customer service which leaves most customers without a resolution, such as with 4:3 support, broken Live TV guide, broken auto-play, etc etc.
Also, you're assuming I'd pay MSRP instead of buy refurbished, used, refreshed, etc, which you can easily find Shields around 100 and less.
Their Chromecast support is worth roughly 70 dollars alone, if you bought the equivelent device, that's not including bluetooth support for TONS of devices. Which, I find funny no one seems to care about meanwhile the quality of Roku removes has plummeted and there are tons of posts and comments about the remotes being too hard to press, not connecting, draining their batteries because of poorly developed firmware that can't handle radio congestion/wifi.
So back on topic, myself having experienced many problems lately and only been repeatedly given the run-around, I thought it was hilariously accurate what ChatGPT said. I've long suspected they don't even have a dev team and further research into ChatGPT's results show they largely outsource it, so yeah, they don't.
And sorry but, there's no functionality Roku has that's special. Through Plex, I get 95% of the channels Roku has, too. Their live tv guide isn't even special anymore. And it's so broken, it literally takes 7+ clicks to change the channel, I'll deal with 5% fewer channels for being able to press up and down and channel surf normally.
Those channels didn't sign exclusive contracts with Roku, Roku wasn't smart enough to pay that much to corner the market. So they quickly started showing up elsewhere like Plex.
Per gaming, streaming local media, integrating with smart home features, music, wireless devices, codec support, supporting every streaming service and platform, etc, I really can't think of anything the Shield CANNOT do that I'd want a streaming device to do, so yeah, it's kind of the "does it all" device.
For a while, yeah, Roku had the market and had the best options. But those days are long gone.
I'm not defending Roku's lack of support. I agree they could do a better job, rather than relying on peer support here on this forum. They should have at minimum an email that can accept support issues. I can understand the difficulties of phone support and getting qualified people to staff them.
Buying a used Shield you might even end up with an older model, as there's been three different versions since it was first released. The last version (2019) is the only one that supports Dolby Vision. The Shield TV (the tube form factor) only runs 32 bit apps, so not all Android apps will run on it. I have a Tube and Pro version, and there is a bit of a performance hit on the tube version. As far as "regular updates", the Shield has received very few over the past few years, while Roku is constantly working on their OS. Has Roku made mistakes with some updates? They sure have, but for the most part those get resolved fairly quickly. But not always, see my comment below about RMP.
While the Shield was an exceptional piece of hardware six years ago, it's now long in tooth and so far no word from Nvidia if any replacement is in the works. Since it's based on the Nintendo Switch, which is getting a refresh, it is possible there's something coming later this year. But that's all guesswork. The Shield doesn't support AC-4 audio, which will be the new standard for broadcast TV and some streaming providers plan on switching to it as well. Roku supports AC-4 with the Ultra, and perhaps some of the newer players (I'm not certain about that). All I'm saying is that for online streaming purposes, Roku is still hitting with the big players. Chromecast functionality means nothing to me, as we don't cast anything. Roku does support screen mirroring if I want something on my computer to display on the TV, assuming that something doesn't have a dedicated Roku app. As far as the Roku remotes, I do have a problem with the latest Rechargeable Voice Remote sometimes needing more than one press on the OK button, but that is an anomaly compared to my other remotes.
I am in no way saying Roku is perfect, as it isn't. It's been close to 5 years since they've made any real updates for the Roku Media Player app, which is the only way to watch media from a DLNA server. Yes, Plex works fine, but Plex doesn't support playlist files like Serviio does, and I have dozens of playlist files. RMP still can't use trick play (pause, FF, rewind, resume) with files in the TS/M2TS container, despite my constant reporting it in the beta group. But for what it's primarily designed for (online streaming) it does a perfectly fine job.
I don't know how you buy used online, but it's not how I do, because I don't end up with random models of things.
But, I think we're getting away from the point, it's that my Roku's are so wildly broken that a six year old device is a comical upgrade and fixes multiple issues I have.
My apologies for trying to cut down on the wordage, but yes, I was talking about 2019 models, the Pro version as the tube is known to be the low end of their offering.
The irony here is the 2024 Ultra really wasn't much of an upgrade.
Plex transcodes AC-4, and all of my high quality content is in Plex so that really doesn't matter.
DLNA is also super outdated, you might want to upgrade... No auth, no encryption, relies on UPnP, limited codec support like lacking HEVC/H265. Plex uses DLNA but improves it dramatically, not comparable.
Nvidia has competent development teams and Roku outsources their development which has only been getting comically worse lately. There's really no comparison, and I also disagree about updates, because I specifically looked it up. They have slowed in major updates, but receive regular security updates and patches, and unlike Roku, they carefully improve things without you noticing instead of constantly break stuff.
To me there's really no argument, Nvidia doesn't cause nearly as many amateur problems with their products like Roku does because they don't even know how to test and virtualize their software. And it might not be a long term solution, but it's better than waiting indefinitely while Roku lies to me and my Roku products get worse and worse.
