Intensive Gaming Diary

Blog about different aspects of retro and new video games.

Tag: television

The Last of Us

Posted on by Viljami

I have been watching, and also enjoying, the movie series The Last of Us on HBO. If you check IMDb for a rating you will see that it is 9,2 out of 10. Sometimes the movie that I like doesn’t receive such a rating. This time it does. There have been already six episodes of this TV series. I have enjoyed this series so far very much.

If you aren’t familiar with this game or the series I can explain the main plot. There is a certain kind of fungus that actually turns people into zombies. There are only few survivors that haven’t, at least yet, been infected. There are some main characters in this tv series. I think the series does a great job in describing these characters. That is also the strongest feature in this series.

The series is based on the game. Just in 2020 we got the latest The Last of Us game. It was called Part II. The first game after all was released already some time ago. It was released in 2013 for PS3 and it was developed by Naughty Dog. You might remember this game development company from a classic game called Crash Bandicoot. They have also released a game seiries called Uncharted.

The Last of Us was released to PS4 as a remaster in 2014. This is the moment that I first got into The Last of Us. As there are many similarities in the situation that the game presents it is understandable that it maybe wasn’t so popular during the pandemic. Or maybe the hype is all because of this? Who knows.

The game is as good as you can figure. I can recommend it, defnitely. So the TV series has been popular. It brings together some very detailed personalities that live their lives after this tragic disaster that ended the human populations accomplishments.

I can definitely recommend The Last of Us for anybody. You might have played Last of Us games or not but you have to see this. I am not aware of any release outside of HBO. This might make you to consider getting HBO if you don’t already have it. What finally made me order HBO was a series called “Winning Time”. Since I am and always will be a basketball fan I enjoyed that series also.

About NVIDIA Shield TV

Posted on by Viljami

Some years ago I had a situation with my television. It wasn’t a smart TV. I wanted to watch more content that I liked from it. I tried to make this possible in several ways. First I tried connecting my old Raspberry Pi, the first model, to it. I found out that it wasn’t powerful enough.

What I tried next was to install a Linux distro to a computer and then hook it up to the television. So I got my hands on an old computer that was not used anymore actively. I installed many distros. I was most successful with first Lakka OS and then I also tried LibreELEC. I wasn’t satisfied.

I started thinking if there would be some other solution. My thoughts were first centering around Google Chromecast. It was cheap. Then I found this perfect solution. It would cost a bit but it would cost even more to get a smart TV. This solution was Nvidia Shield TV.

I have now written already three paragraphs in this blog post and we haven’t really touched the main subject yet. The subject of course is the device that allows you to run any Android app and in that way allow you to play games, new and also retro, and see any television programs that you like. The image related to this post displays the remote controller of Nvidia Shield TV.

There are two models of this device available. One has a price tag of about 150 euros and the other, Nvidia Shield TV Pro, has a price of about 230 euros. I have the cheaper one of these two. I also bought a 128 GB memory card with the device. IT connects to your network only with a cable. So that is a small minus. Otherwise I have been happy to use my Shield TV.

It connects to your television with a regular HDMI cable. So, as I said, you can install any Android app. You can hook up your favorite game controller through Bluetooth. I used Dual Shock 4, which is PS4s controller, and I also made sure that my controller had power for it. In this case Dual Shock 4 takes its power from a smart phones charging cable. It uses micro-USB.

There is an app for retro gaming and it is Retroarch. You have to copy your rom files through your local network which is very easy actually. I wasn’t able to play any PS2 games but I found that I could run any PS1 and Dreamcast games. So it is more powerful than your Raspberry Pi would be. And I think there isn’t any decently working Android emulator to be found at the moment (please correct me if I’m wrong).

I can recommend NVIDIA Shield TV to someone that needs a bit more power than the newest Raspberry Pi provides and wants to watch TV programs provided by any Android app. There are also features that let you mirror the games from some other device like a PC.

Do You Necessarily Need A Television?

Posted on by Viljami

So the world championships for ice hockey this year begun last Friday. I have so far got to see two of Finland’s games. In the first game Finland took a victory against U.S.A. but at the moment we have lost to Kazakstan in a very tight game. Both of these games were real thrillers. Kazakstan had many players in their roster that are playing in KHL which consists of many teams from many countries including Russia and Finland.

This yearly tournament receives very much attention here. I am not so in to ice hockey but it’s hard to miss world championships because it’s such a big deal in here where I live. Although NHL is more popular in northern America. How this is relating to what I have as a subject in this blog post is that yesterday I was at my friends apartment and we decided to watch the game – Finland against U.S.A. My friend doesn’t have a television at all so we thought that we could watch it, you know, online somehow. That would have been possible but we encountered an issue about having to register for a certain account that required all of my friends contact details and also his bank account number. That was stupid in my opinion and we decided to head back to my place to watch the game from television that is connected to regular cable television.

This made it clear that in some cases you do need a television. Since we are still dealing with the corona virus it isn’t, I think, a very good idea to gather to some bar to watch ice hockey games. I don’t know if it’s already legal for this kind of gathering to take place but at least I personally think this is not possible. Last year the whole tournament was cancelled. And Finland won the championship two years ago.

I also know one person that I had a discussion with about not having a television at all. He only had a computer and he also had Nintendo Switch Lite. I have connected all of my retro and also my newer gaming consoles to a television. I also have a computer for playing games and I also have a Nintendo Switch Lite.

A television can be the center of the whole home of yours. There can be limitations. You might not just have room for such a device. Some people might even have reasons, maybe religious or in some other way ideal, for not to watch television at all. And why should everyone have a TV? As internet keeps getting faster and even more common it is nowadays possible to keep track of the most important events reading news online. Do we need a television in every home? Some people manage to survive without it.

 

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