Nvidia has raised the price of its Shield TV Pro streaming device, released 7 years ago, by 50 percent. With memory prices surging on booming demand for AI servers, even older electronics are coming under pressure for price increases.

On Oct. 12, Japanese media outlet Gigazine reported that Nvidia has raised the U.S. selling price of the Shield TV Pro since Oct. 2 from $199.99 to $299.99. That is about 1.5 times higher than at launch.

The Shield TV Pro is an Android TV-based streaming device released in October 2019. It features an Nvidia Tegra X1+ processor, 3 GB of memory and 16 GB of storage. It supports AI-based 4K upscaling, Dolby Vision and Dolby Atmos, and can also run Plex Media Server. The price has risen, but the specifications are unchanged.

Nvidia cited rising parts costs as the reason for the price increase. A company spokesperson told IT media outlet Ars Technica, "Prices for components including memory have risen sharply across the industry."

Behind this is a memory supply-demand imbalance driven by the spread of AI data centres. As semiconductor makers focus production capacity on higher-margin server products, supply for consumer memory has also come under strain, the analysis said.

Market research firm TrendForce forecast that contract prices for commodity DRAM in the fourth quarter would rise 10 to 15 percent from the previous quarter, while NAND flash would increase 15 to 20 percent. A range of electronic products, including devices for TVs as well as smartphones and PCs, are being affected.

The Shield TV Pro is still being produced even now, 7 years after its release. Andrew Bell (앤드루 벨), an Nvidia executive in charge of hardware engineering, said in an interview in January, "Sales of the Shield lineup have remained stable for nearly 10 years."

The boom in the AI industry appears to be shaking the price competitiveness even of older hardware.