Photo by Chris Welch / The Verge
Today, Nvidia’s Shield TV got some software fixes with the rollout of Shield Experience Upgrade 9.0.1 (via 9to5Google), a much-needed patch to last month’s buggy 9.0 release based on Android 11. Nvidia posted release notes on its forum today that detail some more fixes and details in another post some known issues that still lurk in the update.
The biggest fix of the bunch resolves major Plex Media Server issues and the handling of file access permissions that changed as a part of the move to Android 11. This stable release follows about a month of the company trickling out smaller hotfix patches to brave users willing to subject their Shield TVs to beta releases.
But not everything was fixed: by the third hotfix release, some new issues appeared, including super slow file transfers between an attached storage device and a network file transfer via SMB. “File transfer performance issues” is included in Nvidia’s list of known issues with 9.0.1, while an issue with Wi-Fi disconnects due to mesh networks also exists, but the company notes that it can be resolved by turning off Wi-Fi roaming.
The Android 11 upgrade would have been Nvidia’s love letter to its Shield TV users, showing the company cares to support its product for the long term — but the buggy software rollout has derailed the hard work users put into their media setups. Users loved the flexibility of Shield TV to build highly customized media libraries with Kodi and Plex for video game emulation.
Since the software debuted, Nvidia’s Shield TV Twitter post for Experience 9.0 has been bombarded by over a hundred complaints from disappointed users. At least one user mentioned they tried buying a new Shield TV as a roll-back, but the device would auto-update to 9.0.
If you have a Shield TV, look for the update notification for Shield Experience version 9.0.1 (33.1.0.283) rolling out now.