4K Gaming In The Living Room

Gaming in 4K With Shield TV

Now we’re ready to game it’s simply a case of making sure your PC is turned on, that really helps since it’ll be the system doing the rendering. Load up Shield Hub on the Shield TV and you’ll see all the games available on your PC that can be streamed. Simply hit play and you’re good to go, it’s really that simple.

First game I tried in 4K is Batman Arkham Origins, which rocks 4K pretty spectacularly. The game runs fantastic, but we did run into one major issue of gameplay-ruining slowdown. This wasn’t the fault of the Shield either, as when we checked the PC monitor, it was also suffering from slowdown. Tabbing out of the game on the PC and back a couple of times, or hitting the home button on the Shield TV and resuming the game (sometimes takes more than one attempt) seemed to fix the issue, although it does crop up at random times. We never did find a permanent fix. What I can say though is that when it is running smooth, 4K big screen batman is as amazing as you could have hoped. Especially pumping through 5.1.2 Atmos speakers (5.1 up-mixed via Dolby mode on AV receiver).

All other games we tested were as smooth as silk, holding up a solid 60FPS at 4K as you would want, both a testament to the power of the new GTX 1080 in our test system and the streaming capabilities of the Shield TV. Input lag was super low from the Shield to the PC and back, we couldn’t tell it was being piped from one room to another.

Although keep in mind that you’ll also want to have your TV in “game mode” to help reduce image processing times, as TVs typically have a slower response than desktop monitors, which will be worsened by TV processing modes, so if your TV has a gaming mode, use it. Cutting that lag time is going to be the difference between winning and getting your ass handed to you, especially in twitchy fighters such as Mortal Kombat (above), but obviously bringing benefits to any game, such as Shadow of Mordor (below).

I didn’t lose the stream once, the frame rate didn’t seem to budge at all, there were no blocking or compression artifacts like you can see on some online game streaming services, nothing. It was like having my PC plugged right into the TV, with the only exception that it wasn’t even in the same room, and certainly way beyond the maximum recommended HDMI cable length for 4K video (5-meters).

Our PC monitor is no slouch, but the 10-bit panel of the TV we’re using, as well as the increased brightness (over 800nits!) and contrast ratio it can output, really gave games that extra “wow” factor and the colours really popped. Of course, how much of this improvement you see will all depend on two things; the TV you’re using and how well it has been calibrated.