[epiccoleman]

The advertisements on the home screen are one issue - but this is something I know can be alleviated with a different launcher, so I won't hold that against it too hard.

Apart from that though, I just find mine to be somewhat painful to use. The UI often just freezes up and won't respond. Recently I've been dealing with sound dropout on multiple apps - have tried a few different troubleshooting steps, none of which have helped. The "voice" integration from Google shuts down the whole box for 30 seconds at a time every time you accidentally finger the mic button on the remote. The special Netflix button on the remote is annoyingly easy to hit, which stops whatever you're playing.

Some stuff is Android TV specific. These aren't really the Shield's fault per se, but most apps do a very poor job of resuming where you left off. God help you if you accidentally send Max to the background, enjoy scrolling through 3 pages of crap to get back to what you were watching. Or if you want any form of parental controls that might prevent your kids from getting onto YouTube - you're stuck with the irritating "restricted profile".

I think really my problem is that I bought the base model (the tube shaped one) instead of the Pro. I imagine a lot of the performance related stuff I've seen would be better with a bit more horsepower. But my current experience has not made me super enthusiastic about the prospect of buying a more expensive model.

A lot of this might seem like nitpicking, but when you've got a dozen nits, that can add up to a lot of annoyance. I can't help but remember how seemingly flawless the experience of Netflix and Hulu were on my Xbox 360 like 10 years ago and wonder how the current landscape is so frustrating.