NVIDIA's SHIELD 4K streaming media player, which is built on the Android TV platform, has received a software update to support Android 6.0 Marshmallow. Some of the upgrades include the ability to customize the home screen, improved color and dynamic range support, the option to set a 1080p/60 output on 4K TVs, and more. The Shield has a strong gaming emphasis, and some new games have also been added, including Real Racing 3, Grand Theft Auto: Liberty City Stories, Oddworld Munch's Oddysee, Dead Effect 2, Minecraft Story Mode, and Metal Gear Rising Revengeance.

From NVIDIA
SHIELD continues to set the standard for delivering product updates to consumers.

With our latest update, we're delivering Android 6.0 Marshmallow to SHIELD Android TV. We're also making it the first Android consumer platform to ship with support for the new-generation Vulkan graphics API.

Announced during CES last month, our latest over-the-air software upgrade, available now for SHIELD Android TV, brings Android 6.0 Marshmallow and a host of improvements and upgrades.

In addition to delivering Marshmallow to the living room, it also continues NVIDIA's rollout of Vulkan drivers across multiple platforms including Windows 7-10, Linux, and now Android.

The Vulkan API provides highly efficient, low-level access to modern graphics hardware, such as the Maxwell GPU in SHIELD Android TV. Vulkan has been created by experts from across the industry working together at the Khronos Group - an open standards consortium.

Today, NVIDIA is equipping Android developers with fully conformant Vulkan drivers just one week after the specifications launched. In addition, Google has announced that Vulkan will be a core platform API in a future version of Android to drive new classes of interactive user experiences. More information is available on the Vulkan developer hub where Vulkan Android samples can be downloaded.