DVRupgrade.com is running a July 4th special – save $100 on a 750GB TiVo Series3. The standard Series3 comes with a 250GB drive, and DVRUpgrade sells pre-expanded units with larger drives. Still, it isn’t exactly cheap – the standard price is $1,199, so this brings it down to ‘only’ $1,099. Enter the coupon code ‘TEAPARTY2007′ when checking out to get the discount. Don’t forget to enter the code.

Includes free shipping, and limit one per customer with the discount. Somehow I don’t think that will be a big problem.

In a new SEC filing, TiVo revealed that they’ve changed their relationship with TiVo Greater China (TGC):

On June 28, 2007, we exercised provisions in our license agreement with TGC, Inc. that ended TGC’s exclusive rights to use certain aspects of our technology and intellectual property in The People’s Republic of China (China), Singapore, Hong Kong, Macau, and The Republic of China (Taiwan). TGC continues to have a non-exclusive license to commercialize the licensed portions of our technology and intellectual property in those countries. As a result, we now have the ability to pursue licensing opportunities through direct relationships with broadcasters, video operators, and other significant media companies in those countries, which can now be structured similarly to our other recently announced international distribution agreements.

It looks like TiVo may be pursuing some direct relationships in these countries, or perhaps they weren’t satisfied with TGC’s progress in bringing TiVo to them. Though TGC has been selling TiVo in Taiwan, as well as Shanghai, China, for a while. And just recently closed another deal to bring TiVo to more cities in China.

TiVo has been getting more aggressive about overseas expansion, which is good. This makes me curious about what else might be in the works.

I wanted to highlight something buried in my last entry – TiVo has quietly slipped another rebate out there. The last rebate ended on June 30th, and no new rebates have appeared on the TiVo rebate page. But Amazon has the new rebate, which is good on purchases made between July 1 and July 28, 2007.

The rebate provides for $170 back on purchases of single-tuner Series2 units with model numbers beginning with ’540′ – aka the ‘night light’ units with the white front bezel. It also provides for $150 back on the purchase of the Series2DT (model 649) as well as other single-tuner Series2 units (models 264, 275, 565, 590, and 595). As in the past, the wording on the rebate is confusing as it refers to the latter as the “$150 TiVo Series2 Dual Tuner DVR Rebate”, when most of those models are single tuner.