Home · Technology · Oct 3 archive
Nvidia Raises Shield TV Pro Price by $100 Due to AI
Confirmed
In Short: Nvidia has increased the price of its Shield TV Pro streaming device by $100, to $299.99, effective October 2.
The Nvidia Shield TV Pro, initially launched in 2019, has seen a significant price hike, now retailing at $299.99, a $100 increase.
According to Nvidia, the price increase is due to the substantial rise in component costs, particularly memory and storage, driven by the era of generative AI.
Nvidia spokespersons told Ars Technica that the cost of components has increased substantially across the industry, impacting the Shield TV Pro's pricing.
The company confirmed that the Shield TV Pro will be priced at $299.99 starting October 2, reflecting the current supply chain constraints.
Despite the price hike, Nvidia continues to manufacture and sell every unit of the Shield TV Pro, emphasizing its commitment to the product.
The Shield TV Pro, known for its powerful Tegra X1+ chip, has maintained relevance for years, offering reliable performance for streaming and gaming.
The non-Pro Shield has been discontinued, leaving the Shield TV Pro as the sole option in Nvidia's streaming device lineup.
The price increase underscores the broader impact of AI on technology supply chains, where components with memory and storage are becoming more expensive.
Nvidia's Shield TV Pro remains a premium option in the streaming device market, offering superior audio and video quality compared to competitors like Amazon's Fire TV Cube.
The company has not announced any future Shield products, leaving the Shield TV Pro as the current flagship device.
Not all retailers have updated their prices, so consumers interested in purchasing the Shield TV Pro should act quickly.
What this adds
The Shield TV Pro's price increase is a reflection of the broader tech industry's supply chain issues, not just a product-specific decision.
Nvidia's decision to raise the price of the Shield TV Pro is a direct result of the AI boom and the subsequent memory shortage, impacting even older devices.
Background
Nvidia has raised the price of its Shield TV Pro streaming device by $100, effective October 2, bringing the total cost to $299.99.
What's confirmed
- “Starting October 2, SHIELD Pro will be priced at $299. The cost of components, including memory, has increased substantially across the industry,” a spokesperson told Ars.
- The latest, Shield Experience 5.0.2, adds the following capabilities to every Nvidia Shield box: With these upgrades the “old” Shield achieves what describes as “software parity” with the brand-new 2017 version, which launched a couple of weeks ago.
- Since the new box has the exact same processing and graphics brains as the old one, according to Nvidia, any of the hardware differences between the two are found in the new, slimmer (and all-around better) controller.
- I asked Nvidia for an explanation and was told the app would roll out separately from the main update.
- The original Nvidia Shield streaming and gaming box made its debut in May 2015, and at the time we gave it a middling rating of 6.9 with 2.5 stars.
- It was too expensive and buggy, and didn’t come close to the app selection of competitors like Roku and.
- The new controller (left) is slimmer and easier to grip, available for $60, and works with the original Shield box.
- The firm hasn't said if there will be any future Shield products.
- Not every store is reflecting the Shield TV Pro price increase, so you'll want to buy quickly if you're interested.
- The OG Shield TV CPU was already obsolete before the Shield TV even launched.
- He was referring to the Shield TV (obsolete and cancelled) NOT the Shield TV Pro ( still relevant and got a price hike).
- Nvidia might have released the Shield TV Pro in 2019, but even that device isn't immune to market pressure.
What's still developing
- In that interview, Bell explained that Nvidia still actively manufactures the Shield and sells every unit it makes.
- The most recent version of the Shield streaming box debuted in 2019, running Android TV with AI upscaling and hardware decoding for almost any type of media.
- When we talked to Nvidia’s Andrew Bell earlier this year, he framed the Shield as a passion project, but it looks like passion projects still have to pay the bills at Nvidia.
- Without a stockpile of pre-AI hardware to sell, new Shield TV units are subject to the same supply chain constraints as today’s smartphones and computers.
- The Shield Pro shows its age a bit with the lack of USB-C for either power or data, but I'm not going to scoff at two high-speed USB ports, even if they're USB-A.
- I host Blu-ray rips on my Plex server, and the Shield is the only device I've found that reliably plays everything without transcoding.
- Nvidia's own base-model Shield TV ($130) supports almost all the same features, but it doesn't have a Plex server, and the 32-bit app limitation makes some high-bitrate content (like Blu-ray rips) unwatchable.
- Nvidia last updated its long-lived family of Android TV boxes in 2019, adding a very unboxy base model Shield.
- The Shield TV Pro was refreshed at the same time, but it gets less attention because of the higher $200 price tag.
- It's not perfect by any means, but if you care about audio/video quality, the Shield Pro has no equal.
- And when Nvidia announced the $1,999 GeForce RTX 5090, no one doubted that this would be the world’s fastest consumer graphics card yet.
- The Nvidia GeForce RTX 50 series features a new graphics architecture called “Blackwell,” which Nvidia says has instructions-per-clock (IPC) improvements over the "Ada Lovelace" architecture used in the last-generation RTX 40 series.