Nvidia's Shield console is a 4K Android TV box that streams full PC games from the cloud
"Desktops, workstations, notebooks, data centers, cloud, card--that journey has been incredible indeed, and today I want to talk about a brand new place that journey has taken us--the living room," Huang said at a press event near the Game Developer Conference on Tuesday night.
Billed as the first 4K Android television, the US$199 console is a small box that Nvidia executive Jen-Hsun Huang said was designed to look good in any direction. Inside is a gigabit ethernet, an advanced Wi-Fi system, and the Tegra X1--the "mobile superchip" that Nvidia launched at the CS show in January. The Shield is capable of receiving 4K video at 40 bits per pixel at 60Hz when those services become available, Huang said. The console's also battery-powered, and can run 40 hours on a single charge.
And yes, it's compatible with Nvidia's cloud-based Grid game-streaming service.
The Shield will be accompanied by a Bluetooth receiver, complete with a one-touch button and a microphone. It also has the capability to serve as a Bluetooth receiver, so that users can plug in headphones and stream video privately. It can also serve as a volume control just by stroking its surface.
Nvidia's Shield will be bundled with a game controller, as well.
Smart devices with applications will replace dedicated devices over time, just as smartphones have replaced dedicated cameras, Huang said. What's really exciting are the applications that you've never dreamed. "These applications are simply not predictable," Huang said, predicting the same trend would occur in the smart television.
Because the Shield is an Android TV, users can search for actors shown on the screen and pull up information about each actor being shown. The included microphone in the remote also allows the user to search for movies or music orally, using the Google Play that's tied to the Android TV service.
Games, games, and more games
But the Shield also will "do for gaming what Netflix did for videos," Huang added. The Tegra X1, with 256 Maxwell cores and 3GB of memory, will expand the reach of gaming, he said, claiming that the console has twice as much power as the Xbox 360 found in so many homes today.
Nvidia's Shield Store will include over 50 native games that gamers can download and play at launch, including Borderlands: The Pre-Sequel, Half-Life 2 Episode 1, and more. Tim Willits of iD showed off the Doom 3 BFG Edition, which looked fantastic on the new console. It can even run Crysis 3 at 30 frames per second
The Shield will also stream games from the cloud from Nvidia's Grid, which was previously a beta app and now is an official service. Grid streams games at either 720p or 1080p at 60 frames per second, with a premium tier unlocking the higher-performance streaming service. It will serve users worldwide, Huang said.
"We could expand the reach of gaming in the way that no one in the history of mankind could," Huang said.
Nvidia already has a history in streaming games. It launched Grid in North America and Western Europe as a free beta for buyers of the Nvidia Shield handheld or Shield Tablet. Until the free preview ends on June 30, 2015, users can access GRID at no charge. Nvidia has been adding at least one new game every week (though usually two). In our inital tests, the service was smooth as silk, though Huang said games may have up to 150 milliseconds of latency, which seems a bit worrisome. (Many people start to notice lag around 30 milliseconds, for reference.)
The Grid service will be available in two subscription tiers: Basic and premium. Resolution and frame rates likely tie into the tiers. But here's the thing: You'll also have to rent or buy at least some of the games, with many AAA games becoming available the day they launch. Pricing and details for the subscription plans were not announced.
Just want to stream the games from your PC to your TV and don't care about all of the Shield's Android TV's streaming features You might just be interested in the newly announced Steam Link set-top box, a Steam in-home streaming solution that Valve revealed hours before Nvidia's event.
(With additional reporting by Hayden Dingman)