Nvidia Shield TV gets a significant update seven years after launch, but it's not one everyone will welcome with open arms

When it comes to high-end streaming devices, the Nvidia Shield TV Pro is right up there with the Apple TV 4K. Even though the current version was launched in 2019, the Android TV box is still extremely powerful for a video streamer.

But as Apple is set to refresh its own four-year-old device at last, Nvidia shows no signs of doing the same. What's more, it's now made the existing Shield TV Pro more difficult to get hold of – unless you want to pay a whole lot more.

Not only has the company scrapped the cheaper, less powerful Shield TV, it has raised the price of the Pro model by a whopping $100 in the US. That makes it $299.99 for the same seven-year-old technology.

The one good bit of news for those in the UK is that the price hike doesn't seem to have been implemented over here yet, but only because it is almost impossible to find on sale.

Nvidia itself no longer lists it on its own UK web store.

How much does the Nvidia Shield TV Pro cost now?

As for the new US pricing, Nvidia claimed to Ars Technica that this is because "the cost of components, including memory, has increased substantially across the industry" – a common excuse for most tech companies today.

What's perhaps odd is that the components costs would only apply to newly manufactured products, which suggests the brand is still making the Pro. If so, why is it out of sale in many regions?

And if Nvidia is still making the Shield TV Pro, it suggests it still sells – so why have we not seen a new, upgraded model?

It's a shame as I can't see consumers stomaching such a massive rise in the retail price, not when equally as powerful and useful streaming devices can be bought for half the new ticket.

Still, it's another thing we can chalk up to RAMageddon and the hunger to build more AI data centres – of which Nvidia is ironically as culpable as any.