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Nvidia SHIELD Pro Android TVs may have HDD issue

by Mark Tyson on 15 September 2015, 12:06

Tags: NVIDIA (NASDAQ:NVDA)

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Nvidia is recalling a number of Nvidia Shield Pro Android TV consoles due to a potential issue with the hard drives installed within the devices. If you have an Nvidia Shield Pro Android TV console (the Pro has a 500GB HDD, the non-Pro has 16GB of flash storage), the first symptom of the HDD issue you might notice is "the device's failure to properly update during a System Upgrade (fastboot menu is seen)". If you get that error during 'Upgrade 1.4' then you should apply for a replacement (RMA). Otherwise you will have a device with a "hard drive issue that can worsen over time".

The 500GB Pro device is pictured on the right

Nvidia Customer Care posted a short Q&A on the HDD issue, on its GeForce Community website. As well as the firmware update flagging up the HDD issue which may be present on your device, you might have already experienced "severe and persistent pixilation in all tiles of the top row of the Android TV home screen." Units with these symptoms also need to be returned. If you are thinking of skipping Upgrade 1.4 for your device, to swerve the issue, Nvidia says that "future upgrades will also see the fastboot error". As with the previous recent SHIELD tablet recall, Nvidia won't wait until you post off your RMA approved faulty device to send along a new one, and those outside the US should be catered for.

In the wake of the new Apple TV launch Nvidia rather cockily put up a blog post entitled "Welcome to the Game, Apple TV." You could say pride comes before a fall. It claimed the Nvidia Shield Android TV Console is head and shoulders better than the 'generic media streamers' and Apple TV (2015) thanks to its scope to go beyond 1080p and mobile games and offer 4K streaming "and amazing gaming locally and from the cloud". It might have a point, but this recall, however minor and affecting only a few of its HDD equipped devices, has pretty bad timing.



HEXUS Forums :: 5 Comments

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Why are soo many nvidia products having such major manufacturing issues or pretty bad design oversights?
Bad choices overall; the base console should have 32GB of storage; installing on sd card is not always fully supported and definitely not preferably to onboard storage. They really don't know what they're doing…
dcwt2010
Bad choices overall; the base console should have 32GB of storage; installing on sd card is not always fully supported and definitely not preferably to onboard storage. They really don't know what they're doing…

I agree the internal should have been 32Gb as theres just 11GB free out of the box. However the Nvidia firmware does actually allows moving both the app and app data to the micro SD. Personally I just got the 16gb version and used a root app called foldermount to map folders to an external usb3 drive, which has much faster performance than a micro sd. Still not as fast as the internal flash obviously.
dcwt2010
Bad choices overall; the base console should have 32GB of storage; installing on sd card is not always fully supported and definitely not preferably to onboard storage. They really don't know what they're doing…

You are aware they sell a PRO model and IMHO it's pretty clear they're trying to get most to opt for that as 32GB won't seem like much either once unreal4/unity5 etc games start going 4GB+ a lot. AS the OP mentioned usb3 works fine too (not to mention app/app data not being an issue like most) for the expansion of the small models. Your comment would make more sense if neither of these options existed.

The 32GB option would only serve to up the price and that would have had more whining with not much more benefit. You'd rather get gamers to go 500.
outwar6010
Why are soo many nvidia products having such major manufacturing issues or pretty bad design oversights?

1% of a product containing a Seagate consumer grade hard drive are seeing a problem? Unless Nvidia are fibbing about the numbers I am struggling to see a story here, certainly not a major issue.