I'm seeing rumours that people are getting into the newly themed coaster ride. Does anyone have details on if this is true?
My folks are massive muppets fans, and they are on their annual WDW holiday right now, but coming home on Friday. So if I find out there's a chance they could get on the ride, I'll let them know.
TIA
After declining to update my Shield from v8.x for quite some time, I finally relented about 4 months ago. At first all seemed fine other than some niggles with how new Android handles file access for applications & external storage (boy oh boy is that a pain now!).
But as many others, I didn't want the noisy front screen and the ads, so I took the advice on here to install Projectify and get that set up as the default home page. So now I have a lovely simple front screen with the 6 apps I actually use, and then a hidden menu underneath that lets me pop up the main android settings and all of the installed apps. Its pretty much perfect.
But the lock up and crashes became an issue. After a while, I decided to clean and repaste the device, just in case - it wasn't too bad but still worth doing. This made no difference, so I eventually relented and did a full factory reset.
Countless hours of setting things up later (did I mention the nightmare of connecting to external storage in newer verisons of Android, jesus!).
At least its all fixed though. Right.
No.
Still coming back to the TV to find the Shield is dead. Sometimes more than once a day. So I started looking at buying a 2019 model last week as a cure-all and also to get DV content to work at full quality, rather than defaulting back to HDR10.
But thought I'd check one last thing before I did. Is it crashing because its running out of RAM?
And to answer that question, I can confidently say: Maybe.
First thing, installed the SDK stuffs and checked the current RAM situation. Oh boy, was this thing starved of RAM - I had about 50Mb of free RAM, 2.82 GB used, and just over 1Gb in the cache file. My belief is that it was totally starved of working memory and it was causing crashes.
So I looked at what could be done. I like Projectivity and didn't want to lose it, but I don't need the standard launcher anymore, and it was using memory.
So I removed it, and a few other bits and pieces:
The Main Launcher
Home Recommendations
Google Play Services for Instant Apps
Using the command: adb shell pm disable-user --user 0 [package.name]
So now, when I boot the shield there's not flip flop between Projectivity and stock, or any worry about it at all - it just boots cleanly and quickly.
In the end, I've got 90MB free, which doesn't sound great. But crucially, only 100MB in the swap file.
I've reduced the overall RAM pressure by a full GB.
Don't forget Android will pre-load anything it thinks you might use, it doesn't like to leave RAM unused if I understand correctly - so this largely explains the physical RAM being largely unchanged - the difference is that beforehand there was no choice, the RAM and cache was all full - there's a GB free now.
I also found that plex was using 25% CPU constantly, for over a day. No idea if it had always been doing this - but clearly its not a good thing. Did a ton of troubleshooting, but nothing worked. In the end I wiped it and reinstalled and now that is totally fine too. I suspect the low RAM caused all kinds of issues with the database and scanning loops, and as soon as I cleaned it up it's ran just fine now. So at least that's made a noticeable difference.
Its also fun to point out that playing a full 4k HDR Remux file from my external HDD only puts a 50% (out of 400% - 4 CPU threads - so really 12.5%) load on the box. The Shield can handle 4k playback without breaking sweat!
BTW: "adb shell top -m 5" if you want to see the top 5 demanding apps on your system and the overall state.
About 3 years ago, we started watching some fairly interesting stuff on youtube, for example the outdoor boys. Fairly interesting watching how to build a shelter, how to make food in the wild etc. Also watched a little of Mr Beast (was ok at first, then very repetitive and I hear he's a bit of an arse as well)
In the meantime, the eldest was asking to be allowed youtube on her own tablet & on the TV, and after holding back for a while, we relented a few months ago.
As I suspected though, with no guardrails from me, they've all pivoted to the absolute tripe of content. Absolutely awful stuff - obviously highly-produced to hit target audiences with specific products and "zany" actions that are so clearly fake.
Can anyone recommend channels that kids will find really interesting, but also have some quality to them, maybe something genuine and/or adds value to understanding something about the world (like the outdoor boys does teach about shelters, Alaska, making a fire etc). Nothing against just fun content if its actually high quality btw.
Hoping for some interesting suggestions that I can subscribe her to, to overcome the hellscape that I currently see on there! Thanks
Just bought an LG G5 which can play Dolby Vision, but my 2017 Shield cannot handle, and defaults back to HDR10.
I've tried to run a Plex Server on the shield, and then play from Plex client on my TV, but since the TV cannot handle DTS audio, and most remux files I have only have DTS, I get no sound, and surprisingly, I can't make Plex transcode only the audio - so I am a bit stuck.
One solution is apparently running a tool to create a 2nd audio stream that my TV will be able to handle - the other is the nuclear option of just buying a 2019 model, and selling my 2017 one - I can't imagine it would cost me too much overall considering what I just spent on the new TV!
Can anyone confirm if I'll run into any issues with DV on the 2019 shield, and also if there are any other benefits - is it quicker in general operations, more RAM, less laggy etc?
Just upgraded my TV from a LG OLED BX to G5. The G5 can play Dolby Vision which my 2017 Shield cannot.
I tried setting up a Plex server and hosting remux files there, and then playing them back from the Plex app on the TV. The video stream worked perfectly, but the LG TV cannot play DTS audio (so I got DoVi with no sound), and when I tried to let the Plex server transcribe, it all went wonky and fell over (1/4 screen with a garbled image, although the sound was fine).
A little annoying, I'd been advised that the Shield would be able to transcribe the audio on the fly with no problem, and the video stream would passthrough easily. So yeah, grrrr. (unless anyone can solve it?)
Seems there is a solution in having a tool that can check for content and where there is only a DTS audio stream, create another suitable format alongside that my TV can cope with.
Anyone have any info they can share or tips on how to make this as easy and seamless as possible?
TIA!