On the other hand, Plex’s Android TV app, which the Shield uses, is harder to navigate than Plex’s apps on Roku and Apple TV. Android-based devices such as the Shield are also the only ones that support watching and recording a channel on a single tuner, so you needn’t burn a second tuner slot just to view a recording in progress. (In theory, Plex could fix this by building a custom video player for other devices, like the Channels app has done on Apple TV.)Īmong the Shield’s other advantages: It’s the only device with a picture-in-picture mode that lets you play games or browse other apps while watching broadcast TV, and it’s the only one whose recordings appear in system-wide voice search (in this case, from Google Assistant). On other devices I’ve tested, interlaced channels get choked back to 30 frames per second. If you’re a stickler for smooth video, for instance, you’ll want an Nvidia Shield TV, since its video player has a double de-interlacer that plays 480i and 1080i channels at 60 frames per second. The device you use to stream from Plex also makes a difference. Just plug a USB tuner into your PC, or connect an HDHomeRun to your router to get started, and you can stream broadcast TV to any other device running the Plex app. The Shield isn’t even necessary if you have a desktop computer or NAS box on which to run Plex Media Server. (You needn’t splurge on HDHomeRun’s pricier Extend tuners, either, since Plex performs its own transcoding to reduce bandwidth requirements and file sizes.) If you don’t have great antenna reception near your Shield, you can skip the USB tuner and instead connect an HDHomeRun networked tuner (the dual-tuner model costs about $80 on Amazon) to your wireless router, which feeds over-the-air broadcasts to the Shield via Wi-Fi. Jared Newman / TechHiveĪn Nvidia Shield TV ($200), Hauppauge tuner ($65) and external USB drive are the basic tools you need for Plex DVR.
You can then watch live and recorded TV on the Shield itself, or stream it over Wi-Fi to the Plex app on other devices, including Amazon Fire TV, Android TV devices, Apple Roku, Xbox One, iOS, Android, and the web. Plug an antenna into the tuner, then connect an external hard drive to the box’s other USB slot, and Plex’s Media Server software for Shield will handle the recordings. The path of least resistance is to pair an Nvidia Shield TV streaming box ($200) with a compatible USB antenna tuner such as the Hauppauge WinTV-Dual-HD.
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