The 7-year-old Nvidia Shield TV is now $100 more expensive due to AI

Nvidia has announced a $100 price increase for the Shield TV Pro, bringing the streaming box to $299.99 effective immediately. A company spokesperson attributed the change to rising component costs, telling Ars Technica: "Starting October 2, SHIELD Pro will be priced at $299. The cost of components, including memory, has increased substantially across the industry."

The most recent version of the Shield debuted in 2019 running Android TV with AI upscaling and hardware decoding for a wide range of media formats. It uses an aging Tegra X1+ processor. The device launched at $199.99, with a non-Pro variant at $149.99; the non-Pro Shield has since been discontinued, while the Shield TV Pro continues at the new price.

In an interview earlier this year, Nvidia's Andrew Bell described the Shield as a passion project and said the device is still being actively manufactured and that the company sells every unit it makes. Without a stockpile of pre-AI hardware to sell, new Shield TV units face the same supply chain constraints as current smartphones and computers.

The report notes Nvidia is a major player in AI hyperscaling and has become one of the most valuable companies in the world through its AI accelerators and GPUs. It also points to higher prices on current-generation game consoles, citing the PlayStation 5 Pro as an example, which it says rose from $699.99 at launch in 2024 to $899.99.

Stock of the Shield TV Pro has been slim in recent months, according to the report. At $300, the report says it will make sense for Nvidia to produce more units, but that the higher price makes an already niche set-top box less appealing to people who just want to stream Netflix. The report states the Shield is still out of stock on Nvidia's store but is available at the new price from Best Buy.