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NVIDIA had a big announcement to make today regarding the SHIELD Android TV. For starters, it’ll be available in Europe starting October 1st.
You’ll be able to buy both the base model and the 500GB Pro variant in the U.K., France, Germany, Norway, Denmark, Finland and Sweden. Some retailers you’ll be able to find it at are Game, Scan, Cyberport, MediaMarkt, Saturn, LDLC, Materiel, Komplett and Elkjopp, though Amazon and NVIDIA’s own online storefront will also have it up.
With that, the company is also announcing GeForce NOW, which is the commercial name for NVIDIA GRID. It’s a games streaming service that lets you play console quality games without having to have a powerful console to match (though with a Tegra X1 chipset, the SHIELD TV definitely is powerful).
That service will be launched in full starting October 1st, as well. You’ll get the first three months for free, but at $7.99 per month it’s not a bad subscription to keep long-term if you enjoy gaming.
- Beyond that, NVIDIA is strengthening the home theater experience with several improvements that’ll be alongside the GeForce NOW update:
- Support for lossless audio, including Dolby TrueHD and DTS-HD Master Audio pass-through plus WMA-Lossless decode.
- Hardware acceleration for VC-1 (including M2TS and ASF/WMV container support), MPEG-2 and WMV9.
NVIDIA also announced a fiber partnership with Google to offer the SHIELD TV as an accessory to purchase when getting Google Fiber service, as well as talking up some of the new apps coming with the ability to Cast to the SHIELD TV, such as Spotify, Showtime, NFL Sunday Ticket and Google Photos. Get more details over at NVIDIA’s site if you’re interested.
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