Nvidia moves into your living room with a device not just for gaming

Nvidia is ready to join the battle for eyeballs in the living room.

The Nvidia Shield, a mutant combination of set-top multimedia box and video game console, is now available. It adds smart TV functionality to any screen it's connected to, provided there's an Internet connection. Think Apple TV, but for Android.

The Shield is powered by an Nvidia Tegra X1 chip. It's the latest of the company's "system on a chip" processors, built on the same "Maxwell" architecture that was the foundation of new Nvidia graphics cards released in early 2014.