well, if a hardware is not able to do a basic media playing off a network drive (which is pretty common and imperative in todays scenario), it aint a Good Media player (infact it aint a Media Player at all)..PERIOD!. So yes Shield IS superior in that respect, also let me emphasize that I am comparing the device as a Media player and a streaming device, not on the capability of the hardware. Roku Ultra might have the hardware to play 4K, HDR blah blah but only as a streaming device with a capability to play 4K HDR of an Internet stream, not a local/networked file (except via plex which is another story all together).
SHIELD is media player capable of playing 4K HDR from an internet stream
AND from a local/networked drive as well ....which is what makes it superior. Simple
Coming to plex, when and if you will use SHIELD you will see how superior and amazing the Plex experience is on SHIELD, since it works
Both as Server and as a Client (
Roku can only act as a client). SO the entire experience is much much better when it comes to PLEX on SHIELD, so again in that respect as well SHIELD is much superior.
Now coming to it being an ANDROID TV and my point being versatile which rests here, you can make SHIELD as your UPnP server, FTP server, Bubble UPnP server (Mind you which is not same as plain UPnP server, though both share similar name), Run Teamviewer, and for people with Synology like me run all Synology apps flawlessly, like DS Photo and DS Audio and DS Video.
Roku only runs DS Video .. that too crap as hell ..lol ....What do you think, which one is superior..?? ..
Then you have the master of universe media renderer KODI and SPMC both work like butter on SHIELD, can Roku run it ????...
....superiority here..??
Another one,
Roku does not bitstream HD audio Roku Ultra as well, and there are a lot of problems with Roku doing surround sound, especially FLAC 5.1, some bug in the firmware.
Source ::
https://emby.media/community/index.php?/topic/40148-roku-ultra/
source 2 https://forums.roku.com/viewtopic.php?t=97915
SHIELD Tv Does bit streaming
Flawlessly ... Makes it superior I guess doesn't it ...
Source ..
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zb2SLb5819c
Other advantages, it doubles up as Chromecast, so no need for a separate one.
Finally last but not the least ... GAMING .... SHIELD has everything for every segment of gamer, even if you are not at all a gamer, you will agree every one plays Android games, small big you name it, SHIELD has covered this aspect like a BOSS. For casual gamers it has the usual Shield games like dead trigger, all racing games like ASPHALT GT Racing 3 etc etc, for serious gamers it has GRID (GEFORCE NOW), which is like Netflix for games, yes its subscription-based much like Netflix, but it WORKS! bloody works here as well. With a 40mbps Airtel connection ping < 5ms it just flows. You dont need to download install anything, just choose the game and it starts playing. Heavy games I am talking about like
BATMAN:Arkham Origins, MAD MAX, DOOM 3, Tomb Raider, etc etc.
Abhi khanai baki hai, for people who have a gaming PC with that befy GPU, they can stream games from that PC to SHIELD TV and that also works perfect. so you donnt have to connect that extra monitor, infact just keep your PC stuffed somewhere and just stream games from it on you big HDTV. SHIELD OWNS IT ALL, ITS the MOTHER OR MEDIA PLAYER and excels as an ENTERTAINMENT CENTER. No Questions about it..
Hope that is enough to say SHIELD is much much superior than Roku Ultra in every sense....
PS :: DAMM I was keeping all this for my SHIELD Review Thread ...
...
