This is where I'm at too, really wish Apple supported passthrough. The Shield continues to work but it's a bit sluggish now and needs a new gen.
replyThere are comparable devices like Ugoos (am6b+ with coreelec) and Zidoo but they're a little sketch compared to the aforementioned...
Yeah, exactly. I've looked into those boxes but have steered clear for the same reasons. For now I use ProjectIvy launcher for a very clean launcher experience and I used a custom Shield script someone had posted on Reddit a while back to remove a lot of Google bloat and the Google launcher. Works well enough, but frame-rate matching still requires manual intervention (I have a button mapped to forcing it) and the Apple TV app isn't quite as smooth in playback as it should be on the Shield.
replyProjectIvy is a beautiful clean interface, at least in comparison to the default ad-infested abomination that Google delivers.
replyI have a few Android TV devices, and as soon as I discovered ProjectIvy, I made it the default launcher on all of them.
It has the ability to decode the audio on the device and output LPCM if the playback app used supports it. The only thing you can't get is the spatial height channels from formats other than DD+ w/Atmos.
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