TiVo’s retail line of DVRs will gain a new new hardware SKU in the coming weeks, expanding the Premiere family to four units of varying hard drive capacity and tuner count. And it’s a move that suddenly sheds light on TiVo’s recent rebranding of the TiVo Premiere Elite to the TiVo Premiere XL4. The new TiVo Premiere 4 will contain a 500GB hard drive, good for 75 hours of HD recordings, and sport 4 tuners suitable for digital cable and Verizon FiOS only (like the Elite/XL4). So cord cutters need not apply. As can you can see from the spec sheet I’ve embedded above, the Premiere 4 looks to be a very close relative of TiVo Premiere Q hardware that cable partners, like RCN, are deploying.
Here’s the complete retail Premiere lineup, with current hardware pricing and irrespective of service fees:
Chatter pegs the Premiere 4 at $250, suggesting we could see further shifting of TiVo pricing ahead of the holidays. Although, I suppose it’s also possible the XL and P4 could be offered at the same price point.
Update: The TiVo Premiere 4 is now available at $250 and the TiVo Premiere XL has been retired (although I bet we’ll see it again on Woot at some point).
(Thanks for the tip, Sam!)