"NVIDIA's customer service department has had a tough time of it recently. After a massive recall of last year's SHIELD Tablet for faulty batteries that posed a possible fire hazard, it's come to light that some SHIELD Android TV units will also need to be recalled. Luckily, this one isn't quite so widespread: the recall only affects the SHIELD Pro model (the one with the 500GB conventional hard drive), and even then, only a small portion of units seem to be affected. Also there's almost no chance of them exploding, which is a good thing."
Disappointing for people who have invested in the Shield ecosystem, however nVidia is being very prompt and up front about the recall.
That's a shocker... Nvidia screwing up... And this time the overpriced pointless Shield... Again... If I'm not mistaken, Nvidia recalled some Shield tablet or consoles or whatever for catching fire? Nice... Keep buying Nvidia's stuff...
Phones, Tablets, and products that use the same kind of internals get recalled all the time, and its almost always a problem with the assembler and not the designer (the samsung or Nvidia's).
Some batteries were fault, and that isn't an Nvidia mistake. That's a problem with the maker of those batteries.
Your getting way more hardware then the run of the mill $700 smartphone for $200-300 with the Shield TV, so in terms of what your getting for the price, its way better then most everything else in the field of mobile hardware...
Not defending some of the other horseshit Nvidia has pulled, but this isn't something you can bash them over because its not an Nvidia problem, but a problem with other companies that are selling Nvidia hardware for their products. Plus considering Nvidia has only released 3 handhelds/set top box type products, these issues are not much in comparison to some of the issues other companies have had on their first couple of generations of products. And Nvidia is handling this much better then other companies have.
That is not a very good reason. There are plenty first generation products that come out very well. This is not nVidia's first iteration of a shield device. They had the shield portable, EVGA TEGRA NOTE 7 (to a lesser extent), Shield tablet, and now Shield TV. Guess what, nVidia is still not at fault for the. /s At least they are doing something about it and not simply denying these faults as a case to case scenario.
Well the EVGA TEGRA NOTE was an EVGA thing, the only thing Nvidia in that was the processor. The shield tablet was a great device with a faulty battery, and Nvidia was very prompt with replacing those units. And the battery wasn't made by Nvidia, it was made by someone else. Shield TV is the first Shield product with any kind of mechanical hard drive, which is the only part in the device that there has been a problem with. Admittedly hard drives aren't exactly a brand new technology, but there are still chances for everything to fail. May I remind you that Seagate was shipping drives that would destroy themselves just because how they were formatted for months...
Respect for replacing them to the costumers, but still... Also the comparison with a phone or tablet is a bit weird to me. This is basically TV box, and you can't use it either as a phone, nor as a tablet, nor it have half the technology phones and tablets does, but what the hell... I believe it's their problem. After all they have attached their name to it. So people expect curtain quality from it. Similar to the other shields...
What intrigues me is that they are having to do a recall for the hard disks. Why have such a large volume of drives fail to warrant a recall. Then again could always be the consumers fault, especially those who stuff their devices into a cabinet with absolutely no air flow. Like I said before. At least some action is being taken. I wonder how long they are going to take for the process of returning the device and receive a new one. I am also curious if this problem is going to occur again but this time instead of the full warranty a much shorter term warranty.
It is almost identical to a tablet in terms of the type of hardware going into it. The tegra chip in it is made for a tablet like device, and everything around it revolves around this center piece. The hard drive is the only thing that isn't really typical of a tablet except the use of a power brick instead of a battery. And I would like to reiterate, this part of the device, the part that has gone bad, is the part that Nvidia hasn't designed before. The computer inside is solid, but the components set to make the thing run like the battery and storage are what's going sour. That is what is first gen for Nvidia in the shield lineup, and thats where the crinkles in the device lie.