From PC World: Seven years after its initial launch, the Nvidia Shield TV is still held up as one of the best premium set-top boxes on the market. That’s mostly due to its streaming video prowess, but there’s also the GameStream system, which let gamers stream PC games from a local Nvidia-powered laptop or desktop. Despite heavily advertising the technology since the original Shield Portable, Nvidia will shut down the streaming service in February.
The Shield TV’s GameStream feature runs on a local network, and needs a powerful PC in the same building in order to work. It shouldn’t be confused with Nvidia GeForce Now, the cloud gaming service which streams PC games from an Nvidia data center (and which charges for its most premium features). The latter seems to be the focus of Nvidia’s streaming strategy going forward, and doesn’t appear to be in danger of disappearing at the time of writing.
GameStream began its life on the original Shield, the chunky, Android-powered portable that debuted in 2013. At the time it was the best option on the market for low-latency streaming PC games from a desktop to a portable device, even if it did require high-end network equipment to work well. The Shield Portable never got a second-generation device (ditto for the Shield Tablet) but the GameStream service remained a banner feature as Nvidia transitioned the brand into a powerful gaming-focused set-top box.
View: Full Article
