Android TV hasn't quite reached its potential yet, and Nvidia wants to be the one to push the boat out. According to the latest leaks, the GPU specialists are lining up not one, but two new Nvidia Shield TV Android boxes for the new year.
Looking likely to debut at CES 2017, the precise specs of the Nvidia Shield TV 2 remain shrouded in secrecy. But a fresh slew of leaked pictures from Android Police show off at least two different sized models, along with a revised control pad.
Switch clues?
The original Nvidia Shield TV box was a versatile gaming and media player that went down a treat in our test labs. It too was available in two different configurations - 16GB and 500GB - but the latest leaks point to the Nvidia Shield TV 2 launching at two literally different sizes. What separates the smaller and larger models remains to be seen.
What seems like an immediately obvious improvement is the controller. Pictured without the original Shield's superfluous touch panel, and with slightly longer, angular grips. The original was a solid pad, but a little too chunky to use comfortably for extended periods. A standard remote control, again with a voice command mic, looks set to feature.
Nvidia will be supplying the graphics grunt for the forthcoming Nintendo Switch console, so whatever chip turns up inside the revised Shield could be an indication of what to expect from the next Mario machine. What's most intriguing is what could potentially be inside the bigger model - with Nvidia's latest slew of desktop GPUs equally at home in laptops, could we see a Shield powered by the same architecture as the company's Pascal 1000 series cards?
- Looking for more pre-show CES 2017 news? Check out the official CES.tech site
