TiVo Introduces 140-Hour TiVo Series2 Digital Video Recorder for $349 After $50 Rebate

New Rebate Drops Entry Price of TiVo Series2 DVR to All-Time Low

Yesterday the 18″ TiVo plushie that I ordered came in – it joins the 6″ doll I picked up a while back, and the 3″ ornament that I picked up from TiVo’s booth at CES. (I have a fee of the antenna toppers too – including one on my car.) I didn’t realize just how *big* the 18″ doll is – it is HUGE. My co-worker, Audrey, is totally enamored of the TiVo Guy – she’s kidnapped all three plushies for her cube, which is next to mine.

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I picked this up on alt.video.ptv.tivo – an article from C|Net – TiVo to offer rebate on recorders

Basically on Friday TiVo will be offering another $50 rebate on their standalone boxes. The article doesn’t mention the Toshiba or Pioneer boxes, but it *does* have some interesting wording.
The San Jose, Calif.-based company will announce on Friday $50 rebates on all three of its Series2 digital video recorders. Following the rebates, the 40-hour box will cost $149, the 80-hour $249 and the 140-hour box $349. The rebate offer is good from Feb. 27 to May 31 and doesn’t apply to DirecTV systems.

Notice anything interesting? It sounds like they let the cat out of the bag on a new 140 hour S2 box. Per hour that’s not bad – 40 – $3.73/hr, 80 – $3.11/hr, 140 – $2.49/hr. 140 hours is probably 137GB, the most the current 4.x S2 software can address (the 5.x software in the Pioneer units has LBA48). But since I’ve never heard of a 140GB HD, that’s probably a 160GB drive with unused space. That box could be a 160+ hour unit with a new kernel.

So I was reading the latest issue of Popular Science and on page 15, in “What’s New” there is a one page article on a forthcoming product, the Tight Systems‘ Taz 1. A portable video player with a removable/swappable 60GB HD, 4″ LCD (latest chat on their forums indicates that has changed to a 5″ widescreen display), removable pocket MP3 player that uses SD cards (you can move music to/from the HD), etc. Not bad…

But this is the interesting part:
Tight Systems is working with TiVo to enable video downloading direct from you home media center. While most PVPs require you to do analog recording over RCA cables, with the Taz it will be a matter of hitting the “Export to portable” option on your TiVo menu. Your content will download directly to the Taz’s memory either via Ethernet or USB 2.0.

Well, isn’t *that* interesting? The Taz also won a “Best of Innovations” award at CES 2004. They don’t appear to have mentioned TiVo on their website, but it has come up in their forums (other people have seen the article too) and their CEO has commented that they are in negotiations with TiVo. So this may not happen, but it looks like they’re trying to do it. Here are two threads that the CEO posts in that mention the TiVo deal: first thread, second thread.

If this comes to market it could be very interesting indeed.