NVIDIA SHIELD Was Awesome Until Google Decided to Bombard Users With Ads
- The Android TV Home app on the NVIDIA SHIELD is bombarding users with ads.
- The advertisements are delivered on the home screen, so there’s little one can do to avoid them.
- The community is furious with the situation, leaving one-star reviews on the Play Store.
At the start of the month, we covered the news about NVIDIA SHIELD receiving a massive update that added support for the Apple TV app, peripherals, SCUF controllers, and fixed several security issues. It all seemed to be going great for a community that had trusted NVIDIA with their home entertainment, and rightfully so. However, a recent update on the Android TV Home app for the device has infuriated the users' community of SHIELD, as they now claim to be bombarded with irrelevant ads right on the home screen.
This is being reflected in numerous reviews on the Play Store, where angry users resort to express their descent with the update - which, as they characteristically say, has destroyed a perfectly fine user experience. This is particularly enraging for those considering the amount of money they paid for a device that belongs to a premium category in the field and one that should certainly not be riddled by advertisements masked as “editor choices” or personalized recommendations.
When this situation concerns the very launcher of the device, there’s little one can do to stop or circumvent the annoyance. It is like being forced to have to deal with a deluge of ads that aren’t even remotely relevant to their regular content consumption tastes.
It will now be interesting to see if NVIDIA or Google will take any action to remediate the situation, either by removing the ads or making them less aggressive at least. Of course, there’s also the chance of having a slightly reassuring statement that talks about respecting the customer base and listening to the community's feedback while doing little to nothing about it. Hopefully, the pleads of the users of SHIELD will be heard this time.