The Nvidia Shield TV Is 7 Years Old. It Just Got a $100 Price Hike

The epoch of generative AI has upended exertion proviso chains, and determination is 1 ironclad regularisation successful 2026: If it has representation oregon storage, it’s getting much expensive. Even devices with years-old tech wrong are inactive seemingly taxable to that unwritten rule. Nvidia has conscionable announced that the Shield TV Pro is getting $100 much expensive, effectual immediately.

The astir caller mentation of the Shield streaming container debuted successful 2019, moving Android TV with AI upscaling and hardware decoding for astir immoderate benignant of media. While it ran an aging Tegra X1+ processor, that was (and inactive is) accelerated for a TV media streamer. The instrumentality launched astatine $199.99, with a non-Pro variant astatine $149.99. The non-Pro Shield has since been discontinued, but the Shield TV Pro lives connected astatine the caller $299.99 price.

Nvidia has confirmed that you tin blasted AI for the higher Shield TV pricing. “Starting October 2, SHIELD Pro volition beryllium priced astatine $299. The outgo of components, including memory, has accrued substantially crossed the industry,” a spokesperson told Ars.

When Ars Technica talked to Nvidia’s Andrew Bell earlier this year, helium framed the Shield arsenic a passionateness project, but it looks similar passionateness projects inactive person to wage the bills astatine Nvidia. In that interview, Bell explained that Nvidia inactive actively manufactures the Shield and sells each portion it makes. Without a stockpile of pre-AI hardware to sell, caller Shield TV units are taxable to the aforesaid proviso concatenation constraints arsenic today’s smartphones and computers.

Nvidia isn’t a unfortunate here, though. As a cardinal subordinate successful AI hyper scaling, the institution is much liable than astir for the sky-high outgo of components. It has besides go 1 of the astir invaluable firms successful the satellite acknowledgment to its market-leading AI accelerators and GPUs. As a consequence, we’re seeing caller products motorboat astatine higher prices than their predecessors, and galore extremity up getting much costly during their lifetimes. Game consoles person been peculiarly affected, with Nintendo, Microsoft, and Sony each bumping the prices of their current-gen hardware. The PS5 Pro, for example, has gone from $699.99 astatine motorboat successful 2024 to $899.99 today.

Stock of the Shield TV Pro has been slim for the past fewer months, astir apt due to the fact that it became excessively costly to manufacture caller units with constituent prices rising truthful quickly. At $300, it volition marque consciousness for Nvidia to churn retired much devices. However, this higher terms volition origin an already niche set-top container to beryllium adjacent little appealing to radical who conscionable privation to watercourse Netflix.

Unless you request the Shield’s extended codec enactment oregon Plex server capability, it makes much consciousness to get a cheaper streamer. The Shield is inactive retired of banal connected Nvidia’s store, but it’s disposable astatine the caller terms from Best Buy.

This communicative primitively appeared on Ars Technica.