I have one of them, and been using it daily since I bought it in 2016. Bought a cheap Bluetooth remote control from AliExpress which was an upgrade over the Logitech Harmony crap I had earlier.
If it were to break, knock on wood it won't happen, what options are there? I have tried to look but haven't really found anything that is free of Chinese backdoors and has decent hardware. For just Plex or Jellyfin a N100 box or similar could do, but I want easy launch of HBO, YouTube etc. And I need that remote control option.
From what I've seen in forums where people asked this, the answer is: nothing.
I only have two devices providing material to my media system: a Shield Pro and a Blu-Ray player. The Shield is the critical element, used daily for streaming and playing local media from a USB-connected SSD.
I hope Nvidia revises the Shield with up-to-date hardware and maintains its flexible nature. It's a pretty cool product. The biggest shortcomings I've encountered are the fault of moronic media companies. Great example: Spectrum (the cable company). These dolts have an Android application with which subscribers can watch content. But it doesn't run on Android TVs. It's called "Spectrum TV." It's so gallingly stupid that I hate rewarding them with money every month.
Oh, and I love how they addressed the goddamned Netflix button. If you so much as LOOK at the remote, Netflix launches in the middle of whatever you're watching. I actually removed the button from the remote entirely.
With a SofaBaton remote and some button reassignments using the Button Mapper app, everything is just right now, and pairing a Bluetooth mouse and keyboard was easy.
Apple TV is great except they prevent installing software which is not on their App Store. A big one for me is SmartTubeNext, which removes YouTube ads and sponsored segments. I can't even pay for that if I wanted to.
I've been using the Thomson Google TV Streaming Stick. It's cheap (~40 euros) and it works surprisingly well for what it is. It's sold in Europe, but I think you can find the same product in the US at Walmart, rebranded as Onn+ Streaming Device.
It's not as powerful as an Nvidia Shield, of course, but at least is not a random product from Temu riddled with spyware.
I have bought three for all my relatives since 2015, and finally bought one for myself. They are still in stock and sold by local brick and mortar retailers as well as online!
I use the n100 for jellyfin, and shield for streaming and controller with jellyfin client.
The built-in OS on my LG is honestly good enough for me. There's a jellyfin client in the LG app store that works well enough (it's just a wrapper for a browser client as I understand it). But I only use my TV to watch shows/movies, not sure about other usecases.
If it were to break, knock on wood it won't happen, what options are there? I have tried to look but haven't really found anything that is free of Chinese backdoors and has decent hardware. For just Plex or Jellyfin a N100 box or similar could do, but I want easy launch of HBO, YouTube etc. And I need that remote control option.