NVIDIA Shield TV Marshmallow Update Released

Last week, NVIDIA announced a preview OS upgrade to developers who wanted to try the new Vulkan graphics APIs. It was a build of Marshmallow with the APIs enabled. Developers had to specifically sign up for early access, while NVIDIA said that Marshmallow would be coming to the Shield TV “soon”™.

In about a week, NVIDIA decided to flip the switch and start rolling out Marshmallow to all their TVs with an over-the-air update. In addition to a bump in the operating system, there are a number of other improvements NVIDIA made.

Release Notes

Shield Experience Upgrade 3.0

What’s New?
Android 6.0 Marshmallow Upgrade

  • Enjoy a new background for your home screen, plus a redesigned Google Play Store
  • Customize the recommendations row or re-order your app and game tiles. Go to Settings > Preferences > Home Screen
  • Turn your SD card or external USB storage into encrypted niternal storage for your apps and games.
  • Set up a new SHIELD without any typing. Just say “OK Google, set up my device” from your phone and your Google account and Wi-Fi password will be automatically transferred to your TV.

New SHIELD Features

  • Access the power menu on the home screen by holding the Back button.
  • Seamlessly switch between surround sound and headset audio in Netflix app
  • Added wireless support for SHIELD controller when charging via USB, including headset audio and voice search
  • Improved color support for YUV 4:2:0 video playback
  • Option to set 1080p 60Hz resolution on Ultra HD TVs
  • Option to set RGB Full Range. Go to Settings > HDMI > Dynamic Range
  • Improved support for Denon receivers
  • CEC volume control for more audio receivers
  • Supports the new Vulkan™ API for high-efficiency access to SHIELD’s graphics hardware

Some things, like the redesigend Play Store, are not necessarily new features or something NVIDIA contributed but are relatively new things. NVIDIA also mentions optimizations for new apps and games, which are likely bug fixes in Marshmallow in general.

In addition to an update to the operating system, there are firmware updates for the remote and game controller which should improve performance as well.

The update is over 800MB, so it’ll take a while to download and install. A more in-depth hands-on will be published later.

Nick Felker

Nick Felker is a student Electrical & Computer Engineering student at Rowan University (C/O 2017) and the student IEEE webmaster. When he's not studying, he is a software developer for the web and Android (Felker Tech). He has several open source projects on GitHub Devices: Moto G-2013 Moto G-2015, Moto 360, Google ADT-1, Nexus 7-2013 (x2), Lenovo Laptop, Custom Desktop. Although he was an intern at Google, the content of this blog is entirely independent and his own thoughts.

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