hey everybody it's Lon Seidman and we've
got another home theater talker episode
here where I'm going through some of the
changes I'm making upstairs as I now
begin to watch a few more movies with my
new OLED television I'm gonna put a
playlist down below so you can get the
context for everything that I'm talking
about and today I'm gonna focus on the
Xbox One S as a media player and whether
or not I think it is better now than the
Nvidia shield TV they cost very close
now to each others so there's not a huge
difference in price between the shield
here and the Xbox and I wanted to give
you my experiences so far now that I've
got this HDR TV now that I'm watching
some 4k blu-ray movies and let you know
what I think of this so far but I did
have to make one new purchase to the
system since I last updated you on it
and that was replacing out the audio
receiver
I had a great Yamaha receiver that I've
been using for many years but it did not
support 4k nor did it support the new 4k
copy-protection standard that all of
these devices require so I had to swap
that out
I bought a Yamaha RX 2070 not cheap
about $1600 but it is a higher powered
receiver delivers about 140 watts per
channel and it also supports Dolby Atmos
and DTS X which my old receiver didn't
support so hopefully I'll be able to
take advantage of some of these new
audio technologies with it it also has a
slew of inputs on the back of it so if
your TV is limited in how many HDMI
ports it has one of these receivers can
really help because you can add a whole
bunch more and control everything from
that central receiver remote which was
very very helpful so I got that going on
there again not happy about having to
spend that much to basically replace a
fully functional and just fine receiver
but that was something I had to do to
get all this 4k stuff going and before
we get into this video I do want to let
you know in the interest of full
disclosure that I paid for the Xbox here
with my own funds this Nvidia shield TV
I also purchased with my own funds but
they have sent one or two units to the
channel for review in the past all the
opinions you're about to hear are my own
nobody is paying for this review and no
one has reviewed this content before it
has been uploaded we might also mention
a few sponsors or past sponsors in this
video and I'll mention those disclosures
at the time that those product
come up in the conversation so let's get
into it and see how these two products
stack up now I did want to give you some
thoughts on this new 4k blu-ray standard
which was why I purchased the Xbox in
the first place to watch these films and
I'll tell you what I am NOT as impressed
with the jump from 1080p to 4k as I was
when I went from DVD to blu-ray the
1080p blu-ray a number of years ago it's
not that big of a visual difference
especially on some of these new 4k
televisions that up convert from 1080p
so well so if you are you know watching
your 1080p blu-rays and very satisfied
with the way they look on your new 4k TV
you will probably notice some
differences in resolution here with
these new films but again it's not going
to be as groundbreaking of a jump as you
might remember going from you know
standard definition DVD to hi-def
blu-ray those TVs really do upconvert
quite well you will notice if your eyes
are attuned for this as a savvy movie
watcher the HDR color is something
significant and worth talking about you
will get a much more rich color on
screen and you'll notice that in certain
scenes especially when movies are really
supporting that HDR mode quite well but
there's a catch to all of this and that
is how they shoot these movies so this
movie here the Martian has most of its
practical set scenes shot at 5k and they
down converted it to 4k and those look
nice and sharp a real difference I think
over the blu-ray version especially if
you put them next to each other but when
Matt Damon wanders out into Mars and we
switched to scenes that had to be
rendered with digital effects in them
they actually decline in image quality
you see a real reduction in the
sharpness of the image because those
effects sheet scenes were rendered at 2k
or 1080p and then being up converted to
4k and you'll notice a pretty sharp
difference in quality between the times
that Matt Damon is inside his base versus
when he is out on the Martian Tundra
there and that's not something you'll
notice as readily on the 1080p blu-ray
which was consistently 1080p across the
entire film this one's going to jump
from a really nice sharp image to
something a little fuzzier depending on
what's going on in the movie you're also
going to see on some older films where
they were using traditional film to
shoot the movie and then having to film
the effect shots back onto film
and merge them all together the analog
way like Terminator 2 and others you
also notice some image declines in those
shots as well because they did have like
a generation loss when they were filming
those movies in the first place you're
gonna see some you know some image
quality that's just not consistent
across these movies and I certainly
noticed that with the Martian there's a
great website called real or fake 4k
dot-com that I suggest you take a look
at to see exactly which films really
benefit from this 4k technology and
which ones might be fudging it a little
bit and this one certainly did perhaps
they can go back to the effect shots
over time and re-render them at 4k but
the cost to do so I think for the
studios might be more than they would
sell on physical copies here and that's
one of the pitfalls of having these
really super high resolution televisions
you can see all the blemishes now and
all the things that they were doing a
trick us over the years because
projection technology just wasn't all
that great in the theaters and we were
usually running on 1080p or less
displays at home but now we've got some
nice stuff and it's fairly apparent now
some of the differences in how these
movies look from one scene to the next
so let's get into the hardware I'm using
to watch these films and see whether or
not the Xbox One S is a good replacement
for an Nvidia shield and I have to say
I'm getting a bit of buyer's remorse on
this it started when I first unboxed it
and shared that experience with all of
you here on the channel a bunch of you
wrote in saying you know it may not be
the best choice and here are some
reasons why and I you know decided to
try it for myself and see and I agree
with a lot of the sentiments here a
couple of issues first is the fan noise
this thing makes a lot of noise they've
improved the fan noise over the prior
edition of the Xbox but this one's still
making some noise not only from the fans
but also from the disk spinning on it
you'll notice that especially in quieter
scenes of the movies you're watching but
I do like the change in industrial
design over the prior Xbox including the
integrated power supply my old xbox has
a fan on the power supply and the Xbox
itself it was always making a ton of
noise this one is quieter by comparison
but not as quiet as the Nvidia shield
but the Xbox one though has a blu-ray
player on board and one that supports 4k
blu-rays and you can watch those in HDR at the 4k
resolution even though it's not capable
of playing games at 4k so that's maybe a
plus but the problem here is that the
color accuracy on the Xbox One S is not
as good as a standalone 4k Ultra HD
blu-ray player there's a great channel
on YouTube called HD TV test where he
did a heads up comparison between the
Xbox's and the blu-ray players and based
on how the Xbox processes imagery it's
not as accurate with its HDR color which
might be an issue for enthusiasts but
one thing I noticed while setting up the
Xbox is that this HDR color stuff is
going to be a pain point for a lot of
consumers we've now got different
resolutions to think about you really
can't play back one of these HDR 4k
blu-ray discs on a television that
doesn't support HDR because the colors
are not going to look right and the Xbox
here while it had a very good means of
figuring out what my TV was capable of
when it was directly plugged into the TV
all of those automatic suggestions went
away when I plugged it in through the
audio receiver and I had to activate
everything manually now I have a brand
new television that supports all the
latest and greatest stuff but I have a
slightly older 4k TV that I got just
about a year and a half ago that only
supports HDR at certain frame rates and
this is stuff that I think a lot of
consumers are going to run into maybe
they bought that 4k TV when it had
minimal HDR support and now all of a
sudden they've got the Xbox here and
either won't use their TV to its full
capabilities or just get stuck when they
don't know which setting to activate or
deactivate when trying to watch some
movies on it so I think it's gonna take
a couple of years to get all this stuff
kind of worked out but that was
definitely an issue that I encountered
it's not unique though to the Xbox here
we've had a similar issue with the Apple
TV on that older 4k TV over there when
we were setting that up now the Xbox One S
another thing people reminded me
about doesn't support another HDR mode
called Dolby vision and that's something
the Nvidia shield at the moment doesn't
support either so I'm sure at some point
we might see a revision in hardware that
will bring in that additional HDR mode
and yet again that's just yet another
thing that consumers are going to have
to think about when shopping for movies
as well as the hardware to play them
back now I've always been a big fan of
the Nvidia
shield because it lets me consume the
media that I own and control the way I
want to and I've talked in the past
about how I took all of my blu-ray
movies and basically ripped them on to a
network attached storage device I have
down in my utility closet here and I'm
able to stream the movies that I own
anywhere in the house whenever I want to
whatever device I want so I can watch
them on the Nvidia shields here but I
could also play them back on computers
phones and tablets and I like that
flexibility of not having to bring discs
all over the house and lose them I can
take the discs and just put them on that
network attached storage device and play
them back and the best part about the
shield is that it's gotten so much
better at that over my period of
ownership so this does support Kodi
which is an open source media playback
application that I use all the time
lossless audio works on here so I get
the same exact audio quality that those
original discs had even DTS X and Atmos
now work with this so you get the
absolute best audio quality no loss in
visual quality and the convenience of
watching anywhere in the house it also
effectively switches my television down
to the same frame rate as the movies so
I don't get jagged playback I've just
been so satisfied with this thing and
they keep making improvements to make
that media experience better Kodi is
also available now on the Xbox one and I
did try to replicate that experience
that I get on the shield here with the
Xbox but unfortunately Kodi's not
working well on the Xbox due to
Microsoft's restrictions as to how it
can operate so it doesn't do lossless
audio which means that I don't get all
the same audio quality that I'm getting
out of the shield right now it also
doesn't let me play back my movies over
the network which is a big big check
mark against it because that's where all
my media is stored it's on the network
so I thought hey you know what I can
maybe grab the some movies and put them
on a hard drive and plug them into here
but the Xbox at least based on
Microsoft's restrictions do not allow
third-party apps at least Kodi to access
the external hard drive to play back any
media so while you can have Kodi
installed on the Xbox here for my
purposes it's pretty much useless in
that kind of disqualified the Xbox here
as being my go-to media player and there
was another recent development that now
is allowing me to play back these 4k
blu-ray movies
the same way I've been playing back my
1080p movies over the network MakeMKV
which is a great software package for
doing that archiving has some limited
support for Ultra HD movies they haven't
cracked the encryption on it but they
have been doing so on a disk by disk
basis and when I recently upgraded my
blu-ray burner to something that could
support a 100 gigabyte disk for
archiving some of the footage I do here
on the channel had the side benefit of
reading these discs and MakeMKV has
been able to take all the discs that I
just bought and put them on my NAS
Drive just like I've been doing with my
1080p movies and the best part is the
shield here is supporting the HDR modes
just fine so that when I go ahead and
play back one of those movies over the
network I'm getting image quality
identical to the original disc and I'm
not having to deal with the discs all
over the place so I can play them back
on any TV in the house get all the
lossless audio that I was getting before
but now with Atmos and DTS X support and
again it really raised the stock once
more for the Nvidia shield it's been
working really really well if you want
more information about this head over to
the MakeMKV website where you can dig
through their forums and find all the
information you need to get it working
you need a compatible drive there are
some firmware updates coming that might
disable this feature so there's going to
be a continual game of whack-a-mole
between the hackers and the studios but
for me at least I've been able to
largely replicate my 1080p experience
now with my 4k movies the one problem
though the shield has at the moment is
that it doesn't do color space switching
so it seems to be keeping itself in this
4k REC 2020 color space even when the
film or whatever I'm doing with it
doesn't call for that color mode which
means when I'm playing back a 1080p
movie it's not switching out of that 4k
color mode and that's been an issue on
the shield it's something that's going
to get corrected hopefully in an
upcoming update to the Android system
that is running on here this is an
Android problem and right now you're
going to have to manually switch out of
the 4k color space to playback your
1080p movies which is a bit of a pain
but hopefully they get that fixed at
some point in the future there's folks
from Nvidia on their official forums
saying that's something there
working on the Xbox does switch between
color modes automatically now the Xbox
One S does do a very nice job with the
standard media apps that you might use
from a streaming service so I'm thinking
about Netflix and Amazon video and
YouTube and whatnot the performance
between the shield and the Xbox is about
the same with those apps the HDR modes
all work where they're supposed to and
by and large I didn't see much of a
difference there between the Xbox and
the shield one note on some of those
streaming apps is that for whatever
reason Comcast here in the United States
refuses to support HBO Go on the Nvidia
shield even though you can install the
app on it it doesn't work because
Comcast didn't anoint it with their
blessing it does work on the Xbox One
here so if you are a big HBO fan and are
subscribing to HBO through Comcast it'll
play on here and not on the shield
unless you do a chrome casting thing
from your phone to the shield and then
it works a lot of complication nonsense
from their bureaucracy there but that's
something you have to deal with now as
many of you know I'm a big fan of the HD
homerun television tuners I bought one a
couple of years ago and I was able to
get rid of all of my Comcast equipment
here in the house and save a lot of
money by bringing that tuner in and then
connecting up my Nvidia shields and
other devices to it to watch live
television I'm now using their DVR
system as well which runs on that same
network attached storage device that
serves up all of my movies and full
disclosure they're now a sponsor here on
the channel but it's a product that I am
very passionate about because it did
free me from some of the shackles of
Comcast's bureaucracy both of these
devices playback the HD homerun stuff
just fine in fact there's a native app
for each of them one thing the Xbox will
be doing better in the coming months is
that it does support right now DRM
protected channels to be played back
live that's not something you can do on
the Nvidia shield and Android but they
are supporting DRM on Windows which is
the same app that's running inside of
the Xbox one it's one of these Universal
apps where you write code for one
platform and it works on Windows and the
Xbox so as DRM gets rolled out they told
me last month during an interview that
the Xbox and Windows devices are going
to get that DRM support first before
the Android boxes do so that might be one
reason why if you're continually dealing
with your cable system locking down
channels mine doesn't but many do the Xbox
might be the better solution for that
but again both playback the content that
I'm watching just fine and if you're
using one of the silicon dust HD homerun
over-the-air tuners they should be
giving you identical experiences here in
overall quality and functionality if you
want more information on those
television tuners I will also put some
recent videos I've done on them in the
master playlist you can find in the
video description there's a lot of other
videos you can watch to get more context
about everything I'm talking about here
including those tuners I've done a lot
on that now there is one last
comparative to bring up here and that of
course is gaming on these devices of
course you've got the Xbox here which is
designed as a game console first and
foremost it is more powerful than the
Nvidia shield is and as a result you do
have a very nice selection of triple-a
titles available for this console
including many xbox360 titles as well
the game library just is richer here
than it is on the Nvidia shield NVIDIA
has been making efforts to bring more
games to this they have a online
streaming service that brings some
higher-end PC titles over to you without
having to own a PC over the Internet
they do have some games that have been
ported over to Android but again not as
many games on the shield as there are on
the Xbox especially if you are a modern
gamer but me being 41 years old like
some of the older stuff like the NES and
the atari 2600 and many other games like
that and as a result i really do prefer
the shield for playing games because it
can play all of those old games quite
well with a large number of emulators
available through the android store as
well as games emulators that i can side
load onto this that are not available in
the store and this console does a very
nice job not only with the older stuff like
the 2600 and the NES and everything but
it also does a pretty nice job with some
of the newer 32-bit consoles and it's
able to play a lot of the PSP games from
the sony PSP handheld the sony ps1 works
well on here the 3do which was one of my
favorite early 90s consoles runs great
on this device and even some things as
modern as the
Wii and the GameCube have some titles that
run quite nicely on here through the
dolphin emulator and as a result this
does a lot of the gaming that I like to
do better than the Xbox does which is
why this one gets a lot more play time
than the Xboxs do in my house the
other thing this thing does well though
is in-home game streaming from a PC and
I'm able to do that from my gaming PC
down here in the basement to any of my
Nvidia shields in the house and it works
exceptionally well the really cool thing
is that my gaming PC has a 1080p monitor
on it but I'm able to stream the games
at true 4k on my to 4k televisions down
here as well as the one upstairs and
that is a really cool feature there's a
setting inside of the Nvidia control
panel called DSR and when you enable
that feature what it will do is trigger
the shield to run those games at a 4k
resolution it automatically temporarily
changes the settings for that television
if you close the game and go back to
your PC and play it on the monitor your
settings go back to the way they were
and I was able to play rocket League
here at 4k and it looked great
excellent frame rate I've got a GTX 1080
GPU on my gaming PC so some games work
pretty well at 4k others you'll have to
turn down the image settings a little
bit to get a decent frame rate but you
can stream in-home 4k at 60 frames per
second from your gaming PC if it's
powerful enough to this device here or
of course just play your games at 1080p
and when you do that the image quality
is better on the shield than it might be
on the Xbox depending on the power of
your gaming PC so it's no slouch in the
gaming department it doesn't have the
titles but it does have some of the
workarounds to playing those titles if
you do have them on your gaming PC and
of course a much richer library of retro
game emulators and of course a bunch of
Android casual stuff as well so all in
I'm still sticking with my Nvidia shield
Microsoft has done some nice stuff with
the Xbox here and I think for a lot of
general consumers it's probably fine but
for me as an enthusiast where I've kind
of rolled out my entire network here
myself and really have things working
exactly the way I want them to the
shield is the least restrictive and I'm
now able to play my 4k blu-ray movies on
here as well so lots of cool stuff that
I am quite excited about here in the
house but I had to buy a lot more stuff
unfortunately in any event let me know what
you thought down in the comments below
we'll probably do some follow ups here
as I continue to tweak out the rest of
the system here eventually I'd like to
get an Atmos system set up upstairs
where I've got all the speakers set up
for that now that my receiver supports
it so that's a goal to shoot for as we
work our way through the year here until
next time this is Lon Seidman thanks for
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