It has been almost seven years since Nvidia last refreshed its popular set-top box platform, the Nvidia Shield, and there are no signs that a refreshed device could be imminent. But Nvidia hasn’t ruled out eventually making a new Shield, and in the meantime, it says the existing hardware will continue to receive updates for the foreseeable future.
That’s according to Nvidia’s senior vice president of hardware engineering Andrew Bell, who spoke to Ars Technica last week as part of a detailed report on the Nvidia Shield’s history and its future prospects.
Bell told Ars Technica that he would “love to see” a new Shield TV device emerge one day, and though he couldn’t confirm that it will, he said it’s absolutely a possibility at some point.
"We're always playing in the labs, trying to discover new things," Bell said. "We've played with new concepts for Shield and we'll continue to play, and if we find something we're super-excited about, we'll probably make a go of it."
Ars Technica’s article details the full history of the Nvidia Shield and the company’s passion for ensuring it’s supported and up to date. The Shield first debuted in 2015, and updated models were launched in 2017 and 2019, with the final product still on sale today.
Bell said the 2019 model is still selling well today, even though it’s now approaching its eighth birthday. One reason for that is that buyers feel they can trust Nvidia to continue updating the hardware to make sure it has all of the latest features found on the Android TV platform and remains secure against bugs and vulnerabilities.
The reason is that, when Bell and Nvidia Chief Executive Jensen Huang were first discussing the original Nvidia Shield, they decided that keeping it supported should be a major priority. “Jensen and I had a discussion, and it was, ‘how long do we want to support this thing?,’” Bell recalled. “And Jensen said, ‘For as long as we shall live.’”
Bell said that the company does not intend to back down from that commitment, and that’s something that Shield enthusiasts will be eager to hear. But it’s the prospect of a newly upgraded Shield box that’s really tantalizing, for video streaming technology has come a long way since 2019, leaving the existing hardware unable to take advantage of some newer formats.
If Nvidia decides to release an updated Shield box, it would likely add support for VP9 Profile 2 hardware decoding, which is something that enables HDR video on YouTube. In addition, a refreshed Shield would also introduce support for the AV1 codec and HDR10+, as well as the more advanced Dolby Vision profiles that have emerged since 2019.
