TiVo has started implementing plans to subsidize their DVR hardware with a monthly fee, so Premiere is now yours for free if you agree to a 2-year contract at $20 per month. Of course, you have the other option if you don’t want to be tied down that long. You can pay $99, if you are willing to make a year-long commitment.

The TiVo Premiere XL will cost you $299 with a one-year commitment if THX-certified recorded shows are what you want. Just pick your poison.

Tivo has just announced that the Tivo Series 3 and Tivo HD will have access to the Pandora music service. Until now Pandora has only been available on Tivo Premiere boxes. So now you can create personalized Internet radio stations with Tivo’s high end boxes as well.

We all know how it works. You just tell Pandora which music you like and the service will learn your musical tastes and find new content that you will also like. Tivo works the same way as it can recommend similar content based on shows you watch.

The DirectTV TiVo that was scheduled to be delivered before the end of this year has been delayed until 2011. CEO Tom Rogers said that beta testing for the device will continue into next January. TiVo executives have suggested that TiVo will begin to shift towards service delivery, rather purely on manufacturing hardware.

The delays have apparently been associated the current product development timeline, where there is nothing to be gained by bringing a new product to market during the holiday season, as well as technical challenges.

There really isn’t any way you could pry my DirecTV DVR from my hands, short of offering me a DirecTV DVR with more storage space and WiFi. I am not even remotely interested in TiVo and its associated monthly fees and hardware costs.

If you are a TiVo HD DVR user who happens to have a HP MediaSmart Home server, you can grab new software that gives you full control over your DVR. The software is called the HP MediaSmart Expander for TiVo and lets you do some nifty things like transfer your shows to and from the DVR to the server.

Sometimes the USPTO grants patents on technology that just doesn’t make sense. Often these patents are nothing more than an attempt by one company to try and make other firms using similar tech pay a licensing fee. TiVo has been granted a patent on software that it filed back in 1999 that could change DVRs as we know them.

The patent is for TiVo’s Season Pass software. The software sits on the DVR and allows the DVR to resolve recording conflicts based on priority. This is a feature that every DVR has today and it is used when you run out of tuners available and have another show set to record.

The next DVR from TiVo may have been leaked due to a packaging mixup of all things. The “TiVo Premiere” instructions were sent along with a new TiVo HD to Patrick McCarron and they show a slimmed down box with one CableCARD slot instead of two and no S-video or phone jack.

This may be a lower cost revision of the existing Series3 hardware that will be on shelves soon. You can check out the full instructions at Infinite Shamrock.

Grundig may be looking to replace TiVo with their latest TV models. Several of the models will incorporate USB-recording technology. You can use a standard USB flash drive or external hard drive as a personal video recorder or PVR. The catch is that you can only watch the recorded content on a compatible Grundig set.

8GB of storage should hold up to 4 hours of programs at normal resolution, but for HD recordings that number goes down. Content without copy protection can be viewed on any Grundig TV with the USB option, but encrypted channels can only be viewed on the TV where they were recorded on. The USB drives can be fully or partially formatted to suit the USB recording function and still allow other data to be stored on the drive.

The United States District Court, Eastern District of Texas is becoming a hot bed for patent infringement suits. This is because the judge in the court has a history of siding with the patent holders in infringement suits and has awarded verdicts against Nintendo and other large companies already.

TiVo is trying its luck in the courtroom with a new patent infringement suit against AT&T and Verizon over patents relating to DVR technologies TiVo holds. The patents in question are Nos. 6,233,389 B1 (“Multimedia Time Warping System”), 7,529,465 B2 (“System for Time Shifting Multimedia Content Streams”), and 7,493,015 B1 (“Automatic Playback Overshoot Correction System”).

Looks like TiVo is trying to muscle their way into several providers, having gotten a victory out of EchoStar in that DVR patent lawsuit. It’s in talks to bring its service to Time Warner Cable, and according to sources, the endgame is to collect royalties from every pay-TV provider in the US.

That might sound arrogant, or even bullying, but the patents have withstood nearly every legal challenge EchoStar could throw at them, so TiVo is pretty confidant. It has license agreements with Comcast and DirecTV to use as leverage in negotiations too.

This is going to honk off many of you. According to a press release issued earlier today, TiVo will now be offering ad space on its pause menu. I hear you. It sucks. But it’s your fault.

The spam messages ads are designed to outsmart those who fast-forward through the ads (everyone). Advertisers will be able to target viewers of a specific show, or they can cast a wider net and advertise within genres or keywords of program descriptions. At the moment, only Series2 owners are subjected to the new ads as part of the 9.3.2 update.

There’s few things better than owning a piece of technology or gadget that keeps on giving, and TiVo is turning out to be one of those devices with it’s latest beta release of a mobile website to control your TiVo box. This adds to the devices core ability to act as a DVR, and the company has also recently introduced features to order pizza, stream Netflix content and watch YouTube videos.

TiVo says the new mobile site at m.tivo.com will allow users, subscribers or not, to browse television listings and search for shows. The online app will also will recommend other television shows based on what you are viewing. The site is available to anyone that has access to the internet through a mobile browser, and no installation on the mobile device is necessary.

American couch potatoes can thank TiVo and Domino’s Pizza for teaming up to offer them on-demand pizza ordering for broadband-connected TiVo subscribers. The service was announced for Australia earlier in the month, but USA users get the first crack at it. One weak point is the lack of a scheduled delivery option, but this may be just a taste of what’s to come as it shows that many differentiating types of applications could find their way to your TiVo box. Go ahead, order up. Just get off the couch now and then will ya?

Online movie rentals are one of the most convenient ways for movie fans to get their favorite films without leaving the house. The catch is that many of the newest releases aren’t available for streaming rentals. Netflix offers a streaming on demand library of 12,000 movies and TV shows to its subscribers.

Several hardware devices will allow Netflix members to access the streaming content including the Xbox 360 and some DVD players. Netflix and TiVo announced today that TiVo DVR subscribers would be able to access the streaming content library over certain TiVo DVRs.

The DVR has been the best thing to happen to TV since programming went color. Before the DVR, we had to record shows with a DVD recorder or even worse — a VCR. Anyone who has tried to program a VCR to record a show that isn’t on yet will recall the anxiety. The DVR came along and made recording programs as easy as clicking a button and one of the pioneers in the DVR realm was TiVo.

Nero and TiVo announced that they have teamed up for a new software and hardware product called Nero LiquidTV | TiVo PC. The product allows users to record TV programs on their PC with typical DVR ease as well as pause and rewind programs. Once TV programs are recorded, the shows can be exported to PSP, iPod or DVD automatically.

TiVo and YouTube, which announced plans earlier this year to unleash YouTube videos on TiVo set top boxes, made good on that promise today by kicking off said service. Get ready TiVo subscribers – YouTube videos of cheap dog tricks and people’s virtual diaries are coming your way.

TiVo and YouTube specifically said this new partnership “allows broadband-connected subscribers with TiVo Series3and TiVo HD DVRs, to access hundreds of millions of user generated videos hosted on YouTube.” You’ll need a YouTube account to access this new TiVo feature, which will be made available when a new TiVo box software upgrade is rolled out.