Nvidia Shield Android 11 update brings improved 4k streaming and gaming

The latest update is being rolled out to Nvidia Shield devices. It’s packing an operating system upgrade to Android 11, and with that come some other nifty changes and a bunch of increased compatibility. 

With the Android 11 upgrade, we also see new apps that are happy to play nice on the Nvidia Shield. For those that user their device to stream video it looks like good news all round. The update includes IMDb TV, a service that boasts free movies and TV shows. Apple TV, Google Play, now have 4k Dolby Vision HDR support, and IQIYI is also there providing tons of free movies and shows from Asia. The Nvidia Shield can also connect to their own catalogues from various services using Movies Anywhere which links into Google Play.

Those in the United States can also sign up to a deal offering six months of free access to Peacock Premium, NBC’s streaming service.

For the gamers, updates have also been made to GeForce Now compatibility. Nvidia’s game streaming service is a paid membership that lets users stream from a powerful PC in the company’s care, rather than needing one of your own. That's when it works as intended. It’s a good pairing with the shield, but with more TVs like Logitech supporting the software itself, we may be seeing less and less of these little machines, for this purpose at least. Twitch will also now allow for high quality streaming and gaming at the same time within the app.

Following last year’s update to bring current gen gaming controllers to the Shield, Bluetooth compatibility has also been improved. Xbox, PlayStation and Shield controllers now all have support for a Stadia button for some reason and Qualcomm’s AptX codec compatible headsets are now fully supported. There’s also a setting to now automatically disconnect Bluetooth devices when the Shield sleeps, which will likely save many a battery.

These are all welcome additions, but perhaps not the ones many Nvidia Shield users were hoping for in some ways. Many in the comments on Nvidia’s blog are calling for automatic refresh rate matching which seems to be causing users stuttering issues using Dolby Vision with some TVs, or even new hardware for the Shield itself. Others are just hoping to get rid of the ads included on the platform.