Rumors of a new, more affordable TiVo Series 3 have been floating around all over the internet for the past couple of weeks. Last week, I even tossed out a short blurb about it in our news headlines at DVRplayground.

If you don't have an HD television, then you probably won't be as excited about the rumors as I've been. You can buy a TiVo Series 3 for about $700, although over the past month or two there've been some pretty decent sales on it through various web sites, such as DVRupgrade.com's recent promotion, and TiVo rebates.

Even with the rebates making the Series 3 a bit cheaper (averaging around $400), I hadn't felt much of a need to run out and buy one. But with a price tag of only $299, and a fancy new HD TV in my bedroom, I'm seriously considering an HD TiVo now.

There are literally dozens of pictures floating around the internet, but none of them have been confirmed. Over at the TiVo Community forums there's even been some talk of specs, but until these units actually hit the retail market it's all still speculation, right?

So Let's Speculate!

From what I've gathered, the new TiVo Series 3 Lite is almost exactly the same thing as the Series 3. According to some of the folks over at TiVo Community Forums, here's the short-list of features that come with the Series 3 Lite:

Unconfirmed Series3 "Lite" Specifications (TCD652160):

• BCM740x DVR CPU w/ integrated MPEG-2 and MPEG-4 decoders
• 1x dual MPEG-2 encoder (BCM7041 or possibly an encoder from LSI)
• 2x Samsung S5H1411-based tuners (analog/QAM/8VSB)
• 128Mb DDR SDRAM
• 160Gb SATA HD
• Smaller,
  lower-cost PCB (motherboard)
• Cheaper power supply
• No THX certification
• No OLED display
• Standard Tivo remote

Compare this to the features in the standard Series 3:

Tivo Series3 Specifications (TCD648250B):

• BCM7038 DVR CPU with MPEG-2 decoder
• BCM7411 MPEG-4 decoder
• 2x BCM7042 MPEG-2 encoders
• 2x Samsung S5H1409-based tuners (analog/QAM/8VSB)
• 128Mb SDRAM (plus SDRAM for BCM7042s)
• 250Gb SATA HD
• relatively large, 4-layer PCB (?)
• THX certification
• Front panel OLED display
• Glossy, backlit learning remote

The only real differences that I can see are the size of the hard drive (you lose about 10 hours of programming time—not even an issue for anyone planning to upgrade the unit anyway), no OLED display, missing THX certification, and the standard remote control. Since none of those "features," aside from the size of the disk, are all that interesting to me as a consumer, the Series 3 Lite looks like it's a pretty good deal.

It still has the dual-tuner, a reasonably sized hard drive, and all the encoding-goodness you'd expect from the Series 3. Plus, it appears that the Series 3 Lite has a better HD receiver chip in it than the original Series 3 has.

Time to Upgrade?

If the rumors are true, it looks like I may be upgrading when this thing goes on sale. If for no other reason than to watch Eureka and John From Cincinnati in HD without having to be glued to my television set while they air.

I guess we'll just have to wait and see if this is for real or not, but from everything I've seen rumored so far, it looks promising to me.