I’ve got a Vero 4K to watch photos stored on my NAS. It is a couple of years old and it seems to be dying.
My requirements are:
- Watch videos stored on NAS via NFS/SMB
- Install Stremio
- 4K
- Available in NZ
- Sound doesn’t matter too much as I have a simple sound bar.
The Google TV 4K is sold here for NZ$79 and gets raving reviews. It seems I can install Stremio and VLC or Kodi, so that should meet my requirements.
The alternative is a Xiami TV Stick 4K which is NZ$69
I know the NVidia Shield is the best, but they are above budget.
Probably my only concern with these dongles is that they are WiFi based, but I have a very solid WiFi network with an Ubiquiti access point, so that should be fine.
So I’m leaning towards the Google TV 4K, any concerns or considerations?
I can’t recommend the Google TV/Chromecast if you have to interact with multiple apps or plan on using the Discover screen or search. The remote is finicky and feels cheap and the device itself is totally underpowered for Google TV. Its Amlogic SoC is slow as fuck and often drops frames and the 2GB of memory are barely enough to keep the bloated interface in memory while the storage is often full even after just installing a few apps. It has gotten a bit better after even Google had to admit that performance was abysmal but the optimizations just fixed the most obvious shortcomings.
I have sinced unsubscribed from all streaming services and just rely on the put.io app on Google TV to handle my media consumption needs and it is good enough for that. So if you just need the Stremio app (which I haven’t used myself) to access local content, you should be fine. I never saw it struggle with 4k HDR content nor did I encounter A/V sync issues.
I DESPISE the remote. One accidental bump and you’re on another app. Poor design.
Oh yeah, don’t ever let it rest close to you on the couch or within reach of cats.