Is a nvidia shield still the best? Are there others? I’d like to play various 4k HDR video files. Which one to buy? Any recommendations? Nvidia shield looks very much outdated but there’s nothing new.
What about plasma bigscreen? Would that be good? I’d just use it for jellyfin, the DE doesn’t matter much.
You can absolutely set up an AppleTV with no other Apple device in your possession. It is a very good player for many things but much of this is dependent on your choice of application. For compatibility and no transcoding, Infuse is the best I’ve found, provided it’s pointed at a Jellyfin instance. Not a great choice just pointed at a local or cloud SMB share (though possible) as its cache gets cleared frequently.
AFAIK, Shield Pro remains the only option that can play back Atmos from ripped media, but would be happy to be corrected on this.