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Nvidia has increased the price of its Shield TV Pro streaming box by $100 to $299.99, effective October 2. The device, which first launched in 2019, still uses the same aging Tegra X1+ processor, but Nvidia says rising component and memory costs industry-wide are responsible for the price jump.
Nvidia has raised the price of its Shield TV Pro streaming device from $199.99 to $299.99, a $100 increase despite no hardware changes. An Nvidia spokesperson told Ars Technica the hike, effective October 2, stems from rising component costs, particularly memory, across the industry. The company has also discontinued the standard Shield TV, leaving the Pro as its only Shield-branded device.
Nvidia has increased the price of its Shield TV Pro streaming box by $100, from $199.99 to $299.99, effective October 2. The company told Ars Technica the hike reflects industry-wide increases in component costs, particularly memory, driven by demand from AI hardware production. The non-Pro Shield TV variant has already been discontinued, leaving only the Pro model in production.
The NVIDIA Shield TV Pro streaming box has risen from $200 to $299.99 on Amazon and Best Buy, a roughly $100 increase. The device, over a decade old, remains notable for its 64-bit Android support and long software update history.
Plex has rolled out social discovery tools to its Android TV app, including Discussions, Lists, Reviews, Reactions, and Follows, allowing users to interact around content instead of relying solely on algorithmic recommendations. The update also moves the app's primary menu to the left side of the screen. This follows a similar rollout on Apple TV in mid-September.
Developer Chainfire has released version 2.0 of Sideload Launcher, a free third-party Android TV launcher that displays sideloaded, unofficial-source, and phone/tablet apps alongside standard ones. The update introduces a redesigned interface, a cleaner app list, and new customization and sorting options, while keeping the app free of ads and tracking and functional without internet access.
A user named Cobanov used Anthropic's Claude AI to debloat his four-year-old Android TV through developer/ADB access, instructing it to disable unused apps, shorten animations, and log all changes rather than uninstall anything. He also replaced Google TV's ad-heavy home screen with FLauncher, an open-source app launcher, and reported the TV ran smoother than when new, all without rooting the device.
A tech enthusiast tested whether an eight-year-old Google Pixel 3 XL could be reused as a home security camera and as an Android TV replacement instead of being discarded. Using the AlfredCamera app paired with a Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 6 as viewer, the Pixel served as a low-latency camera node with motion detection and two-way audio. The author found the security camera use case worked well, while the Android TV box conversion was less successful, though specific limitations of that experiment weren't detailed.
ATV Launcher's version 0.1.41 update introduces "Arrangements," ten preset home-screen row layouts including Spotlight, Bookends, Centre Stage, Marquee, and Hero Trio, some featuring double-sized highlight tiles. It also lets users embed widgets like Weather, Digital Clock, System Info, and Watch Next directly into app rows, alongside a refreshed Configure Tile dialog, new folder preview styles, edge-to-edge Watch Next cards, and a customizable status bar with pill styles and TV input switching. The developer also released a separate free companion app offering 15 digital clock widget styles.
Android Authority's Robert Triggs reports that the first-generation Chromecast HDMI dongle recently got an unexpected software update, despite being eight years old. He explains he still relies on the device because it casts content faster and more reliably than his TV's built-in Google TV casting features, which suffer from lag, bloat, and audio sync issues.
ATV Launcher Pro's version 0.1.40 update introduces a new layout editor that lets Android TV users add, move, hide, and restyle home screen sections directly on the screen with live previews. The update also brings 12 row styles, seven tile layouts, screen breaks, icon packs, video wallpapers, new widgets, focus effects, and support for Android 16.