Upscaling, which is unique among media streamers at the moment and points toward the future of real-time video upscaling in the home, especially as we move from the 4K era into 8K. That fancy hardware powers one of Nvidia Shield's most compelling features: its A.I. And the Pro does so mostly thanks to the inclusion of Nvidia's Tegra X1+ processor, 256-core GPU, and 3GB RAM (1GB more than the $149 Nvidia Shield TV). With no cult of consumer personality feeding wind into its sails, Nvidia has to do a little more to justify its hefty price, especially when you can get a top-of-the-line Roku Ultra streamer for upwards of $100 less. (And before you Apple fanatics rip me yet another new one, keep in mind that it's a fee I gladly pay every other year for a new iPhone and iPad, so calm down. Only the 64GB variant of the Apple TV 4K matches it in price, and let's be honest with ourselves here: a fair chunk of that is the "Apple Tax" (aka "Fanboy Fee") tacked onto pretty much anything that comes out of Cupertino. I say all of that in part to defend (or at least prepare you for) the $199 sticker price of the Nvidia Shield TV Pro, one of the priciest mass-market video streamers you can currently buy. In other words, unless you and I are streaming Netflix via the same (or at least comparable) hardware, we're not having the same viewing experience, even if we have the same internet speeds and the same display. whatever, and exactly how many megabits-per-second of internet connectivity are required to get the most out of any of these services, our discussion about video streaming is incomplete until we all acknowledge that the device via which we do our streaming matters. ![]() But one point that I will continue to drive home until it sticks is that, while we all quibble about the relative performance advantages of Vudu vs. As I argued in a controversial editorial a few months back, streaming isn't merely the future of home cinema in many ways it's already the glorious now of home cinema.
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