Nvidia Raises the Seven-Year-Old Shield TV Pro by $100 to $299, Blaming Industrywide Surge in Memory Costs

Nvidia has raised the price of the Shield TV Pro by $100, to $299.99, effective Oct. 2, a 50 percent increase on a streaming box that first went on sale in 2019 and still uses the same generation of processor.

The company tied the change to parts. "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 Technica. The non-Pro Shield, launched at $149.99, has been discontinued. The Pro launched at $199.99.

The device is a niche Android TV streamer, not a new product caught in a launch-window shortage. It runs Nvidia's Tegra X1+ chip, offers AI upscaling and hardware decoding for a wide range of video formats, and can act as a Plex server. Those features kept it in production after cheaper streaming sticks took the mass market. They did not insulate it from the memory and storage inflation that has repriced phones, PCs and game consoles in 2026.

Andrew Bell of Nvidia, speaking earlier this year, described the Shield as a passion project that is still being manufactured, and said the company sells every unit it makes. There is no stockpile of hardware built before memory prices jumped. New units are bought from the same component market as current smartphones and computers. Stock on Nvidia's own store has been thin for months. At the new price the box is listed at Best Buy. Ars reported that the higher tag makes it economical to build more of them, and less attractive to anyone who only wants Netflix.

The broader tape supports the company's explanation even if it does not make the Shield a bargain. Memory executives have said they expect the RAM shortage to run through 2028. Devices that contain DRAM or flash have been marked up across the industry, including products whose other silicon is years old. Nintendo, Microsoft and Sony have raised prices on current game consoles. The PlayStation 5 Pro, launched at $699.99 in 2024, now lists at $899.99. The Shield's increase is smaller in dollars and larger as a share of the original price.

Nvidia is not a bystander in that market. Its data-center accelerators are the main reason memory makers have shifted capacity toward high-bandwidth parts for artificial-intelligence servers. The company is among the most valuable in the world because of those chips. A streaming box that needs ordinary DRAM is downstream of a shortage Nvidia's largest customers helped create. The spokesperson's statement does not address that loop. It states the input cost.

For buyers, the practical comparison is unchanged by the corporate context. A Shield TV Pro decodes formats that cheaper streamers still stumble on, and it can host a media library. Those are the reasons a seven-year-old box remained on sale. At $300, they are also a narrower set of reasons. Roku, Google, Amazon and Apple sell streaming devices for a fraction of the new price. None of them is a Plex server. Most households do not need one.

The price change is immediate, not a next-generation refresh. Nvidia did not announce a new chip, a new remote or a new software platform with the increase. The product is the 2019 Pro at a 2026 parts cost. Whether $299 holds depends on memory. If contract prices for DRAM ease, a passion-project streamer is an obvious place to cut. If the shortage runs to 2028, as memory executives have projected, the Shield is a small example of a larger repricing: old designs, new bills, and a company that sells every unit it can still build.