Note, I’ll say right off the bat, that this is an unsubstantiated rumor. PVRBlog’s Matt Haughey is reporting on something a friend passed on to him. His friend, Matt, recently switched from cable to DirecTV and was told by two DirecTV reps that TiVo would be returning to DTV soon.

Personally, I don’t put a lot of faith into this particular rumor. But it is a slow news day, and it is interesting. However, in general I do think there is a very good chance of DirecTV introducing new TiVo-based DVRs in the future. The relationship between TiVo and DirecTV is clearly warming up again, with the previous announcement of a software update coming in 2008. As control of DirecTV shifts from News Corp to Liberty Media, the odds improve, as Liberty Media is a major corporate investor in TiVo. Comments from TiVo’s CEO, Tom Rogers, on last week’s financial conference call seem to hint at more news to come relating to DirecTV, beyond the software update. I don’t think we’d hear anything until 2008 - it is unlikely we’d see a box in time for the holidays, and neither TiVo nor DirecTV would want to poison sales of their current products by announcing something that won’t be out until next year. But the TiVo HD platform would make a good platform for a new DTV box.

Palm has a European teaser page up for “The new Palm smartphone”. Residents of Germany, Italy, The Netherlands, and the United Kingdom can sign up to get more information on September 12th. Additionally, those who sign up may win five of the phones, for themselves and four of their friends.

They don’t mention the model of the phone, just that it is ‘new’. But they do have an outline of the phones in the teaser, and Treonauts points out that the only known Palm smartphone that fits the outline is the rumored Centro. Interestingly, previously the best leaked photos of the unit showed it in Sprint branding, which means CDMA, and there’d been no indication of a GSM model - but as GSM dominates the European market any phone released there is almost certainly going to be GSM.

From Treonauts and Palm Infocenter.

At the IFA conference Toshiba announced the HD-EP30 and HD-EP35 HD DVD players for the European market. The HD-EP30 appears to be a European version of the HD-A30 from the US market, and the HD-EP35 is a version of the HD-A35. They’re both full 1080p playback with Dolby Digital Plus, Dolby TrueHD and DTS HD audio formats. The HD-EP35 adds 7.1 bitstream high audio bitrate audio and deep color output. The HD-EP30 will sell for £240/€400 and the HD-EP35 £300/€499, available in October.

The previously mentioned Venturer SHD7000 is also coming to the European market for under £200/€300.

From The Register, EngadgetHD, and Tech Digest.